Searchlights on Health/How to Preserve the Health and Life of Your Infant During Hot Weather

HOW TO PRESERVE THE HEALTH AND LIFE OF YOUR INFANT DURING HOT WEATHER.

BATHING.

1. Bathe infants daily in tepid water and even twice a day in hot weather.

If delicate they should be sponged instead of immersing them in water, but cleanliness is absolutely necessary for the health of infants.

CLOTHING.

2. Put no bands in their clothing, but make all garments to hang loosely from the shoulders, and have all their clothing scrupulously clean; even the diaper should not be re-used without rinsing.

SLEEP ALONE.

3. The child should in all cases sleep by itself on a cot or in a crib and retire at a regular hour. A child always early taught to go to sleep without rocking or nursing is the healthier and happier for it. Begin at birth and this will be easily accomplished.

CORDIALS AND SOOTHING SYRUPS.

4. Never give cordials, soothing syrups, sleeping drops etc., without the advice of a physician. A child that frets and does not sleep is either hungry or ill. If ill it needs a physician. Never give candy or cake to quiet a small child, they are sure to produce disorders of the stomach, diarrhoea or some other trouble.

FRESH AIR.

5. Children should have plenty of fresh air summer as well as winter. Avoid the severe hot sun and the heated kitchen for infants in summer. Heat is the great destroyer of infants.

CLEAN HOUSES.

6. Keep your house clean and cool and well aired night and day. Your cellars cleared of all rubbish and white-washed every spring, your drains cleaned with strong solution of copperas or chloride of lime, poured down them once a week. Keep your gutters and yards clean and insist upon your neighbors doing the same.

EVACUATIONS OF A CHILD.

The healthy motion varies from light orange yellow to greenish yellow, in number, two to four times daily. Smell should never be offensive. Slimy mucous-like jelly passages indicate worms. Pale green, offensive, acrid motions indicate disordered stomach. Dark green indicate acid secretions and a more serious trouble.

Fetid dark brown stools are present in chronic diarrhoea Putty-like pasty passages are due to aridity curdling the milk or to torpid liver.

BREAST MILK.

7. Breast milk is the only proper food for infants until after the second summer. If the supply is small keep what you have and feed the child in connection with it, for if the babe is ill this breast milk may be all that will save its life.

STERILIZED MILK.

8. Milk is the best food. Goat's milk best, cows milk next. If the child thrives on this nothing else should be given during the hot weather, until the front teeth are cut. Get fresh cow's milk twice a day if the child requires food in the night, pour it into a glass fruit jar with one-third pure water for a child under three months old, afterwards the proportion of water may be less and less, also a trifle of sugar may be added.

Then place the jar in a kettle or pan of cold water, like the bottom of an oatmeal kettle. Leave the cover of the jar loose. Place it on the stove and let the water come to a boil and boil ten minutes, screw down the cover tight and boil ten minutes more, then remove from the fire, and allow it to cool in the water slowly so as not to break the jar. When partly cool put on the ice or in a cool place, and keep tightly covered except when the milk is poured out for use. The glass jar must be kept perfectly clean and washed and scalded carefully before use. A tablespoonful of lime water to a bottle of milk will aid indigestion. Discard the bottle as soon as possible and use a cup which you know is clean, whereas a bottle must be kept in water constantly when not in use, or the sour milk will make the child sick. Use no tube for it is exceedingly hard to keep it clean, and if pure milk cannot be had, condensed milk is admirable and does not need to be sterilized as the above.

DIET.

9. Never give babies under two years old such food if grown persons eat. Their chief diet should be milk, wheat bread and milk, oatmeal, possibly a little rare boiled egg, but always and chiefly milk. Germ wheat is also excellent.

EXERCISE.

10. Children should have exercise in the house as well as outdoors, but should not be jolted and jumped and jarred in rough play, not rudely rocked in the cradle, nor carelessly trundled over bumps in their carriages. They should not be held too much in the arms, but allowed to crawl and kick upon the floor and develop their limbs and muscles. A child should not be lifted by its arms nor dragged along by one hand after it learns to take a few feeble steps, but when they do learn to walk steadily it is the best of all exercise, especially in the open air.

Let the children as they grow older romp and play in the open air all they wish, girls as well as boys. Give the girls an even chance for health, while they are young at least, and don't mind about their complexion.