p. 13 | The Baby's Three Needs

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Dec 27, 1906

The Baby's Three Needs

WHEN it is considered that the whole after-life of a human being can be tempered for good or ill by the management of the first year of existence, it seems impossible to repeat too often the few fundamental rules that should govern all who have the care of infants.

One might sum up the needs of babies in three words — fresh air, regularity, quiet. Babies are but little animals, it is true; but after all, they are little animals with a great deal to do for themselves, and they should receive all the assistance possible from those in charge of them, to enable them to perform this work properly.

In the first year of life great changes are going on in the body, and the baby needs all the help possible to meet the demands made upon its tiny system in the way of tissue formation. A baby can not speak up and tell us that its meals do not seem to set well, or that a dissipated evening gives it a disturbed night, so there is nothing for parents to do but to watch carefully for all the small but unmistakable signs that things are not going well.

Fresh air comes first in the list of requirements, because it is probable that very few babies indeed get all of it that they are entitled to. It has been noted by a wise physician that babies with pneumonia do best if they are kept in the open air as far as possible, and he even tells of nurses clad in fur-lined gloves and coats because the sick-room is kept so cold. But the sick child who would die in a warm, close room recovers under these conditions.

As to well babies, never mind what month they are born in, wrap them up warmly, shield them from direct draft, but let them breathe outside air day and night. If the weather is really too terrible to face, then wrap them up in a south room, and open all the windows.

Whatever the baby's diet may be, natural or artificial, it should be administered with unwavering regularity. The tiniest specimen of humanity is an incarnation of artful cunning where its appetite is concerned, and if it finds that bawling results in feeding, it will bawl, and small blame to it. But the enviable child is the one whose mother is not disturbed by this fact, and who rigidly adheres to times and seasons.

Babies should never be excited by too much play, and especially is this true of the evening hours. There is nothing more entrancing than a gasping, gurgling, hysterical baby; but it is a cruel entertainment, for which the frail, tiny nervous system must pay the price.—Exchange.