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133
IY.—COPY OF PAMPHLET ISSUED BY ORDER OF THE
COUNCIL IN RELATION TO INFANT FEEDING AND
MANAGEMENT.
HINTS ON INFANT FEEDING AND MANAGEMENT.
BREAST FEEDING.
For perfect nutrition food must be given which contains,
in proper proportion, the materials necessary not only to replace
the waste but to build up new tissue in the growing child.
The most perfect food is human milk, which contains all
the required elements in proper proportion. It is Nature's food,
and it is free from the many dangers which beset artificial
foods.
Every mother should make a special effort to suckle her
own baby. Such feeding produces the best results.
A healthy but delicate mother, however, may be unable
to continue breast feeding beyond two or three months, but
even this is valuable in tiding over the infant's most difficult
period to an age when artificial feeding will be easier.
Breast feeding may be impossible by reason of the nonsecretion
of milk or prostration of the parent, and it is inadvisable
in parents who suffer from epilepsy or nervous diseases, or
who have a tendency to consumption or any hereditary disease.
The quality of breast milk must of course be good.
Frequent weighing of the infant will be a good index of
this fact.
No mother should suckle her baby after nine months,
beyond which period the quality of the milk becomes poor.