Mother's Milk: The Child's Ideal Food!

Science has proved that:

• The complete substitute for mother's milk has not yet been created.

• The child who nurses at his mother's breast has stronger immunity than others against all manner of diseases.

• Natural nursing increases health, tranquility, and happiness for mother and child alike.

• And it is the loftiest of all a mother's roles...

There is an important question repeated every day in thousands of homes: which, one wonders, is better — to nurse the child at his mother's breast, or from the bottle?... On the answer to this question depends the kind of care the infant is to enjoy. And although nursing is a subject of special concern to mothers and physicians, it concerns us all. For the care a child receives has the greatest effect on what the grown man's health, character, and temperament will be; and whether a child nurses at his mother's breast or from the bottle may well have much to do with his becoming, in time, a person contented in spirit, gentle in character, and useful among his people...

And although feeding the infant is easier for the mother than nursing him, and more profitable for the doctor, the authorities in public health and the leading obstetricians recommend natural nursing and consider it the best of all means of feeding children. The modern books on children's diseases support this view, the child-welfare centers commend mother's milk, and all believe that the complete substitute for mother's milk has not yet been created.

Natural nursing has manifold effects on children's health. An examination carried out on twenty thousand children in America established that the number of deaths among those fed otherwise than at the breast equals ten times the deaths among those who nurse at it; for natural nursing makes the child less liable to illness. Careful statistics show that sixty-five percent of children who are fed but do not nurse at the breast suffered ailments of the lungs, throat, stomach, and intestines in the first year of life, whereas such ailments struck only thirty-five percent of those granted natural nursing. Moreover, the prevailing opinion is that natural nursing greatly reduces what must be spent on the child when he grows up in fees to dentists and to specialists in diseases of the nose and throat.

A large number of physicians believe, further, that natural nursing not only grants children health but also increases their capacity for patience and their calm of spirit. It is well known that there are people whom illness never touches, and who are the most resistant to contagious diseases: they are, generally speaking, those who nursed from their mothers as infants. And all this does not go back to heredity alone; it is a natural immunity the child acquires in the days of his growth from his food and from the care with which he is surrounded.

If mothers receive what they ought of food, exercise, and rest, their nursing has a clear effect in improving their own health. And if every mother learned from a wise physician how natural nursing should be done, she would preserve her beauty, even were she to nurse a large number of children. The mother, while she nurses her child, should know as far as she can how to order the affairs of her daily life, and should be aware of the harm of smoking, liquor, and coffee, which pass into the blood and whose effect is transmitted to the nursling. She should likewise avoid nervous agitation and fits of temper... The sensible mother gains for herself from nursing a store that benefits her health and returns to her every good.

Natural nursing is a hard, monotonous task: for some months the mother remains an obedient slave to her child, nursing him every three or four hours, while other duties toward the members of the family fall on her at the same time. She therefore needs a strict regimen to hold herself to, and there is no room left her to take her share of pleasures — the outing, the company of friends, excursions, and amusements. Yet the compensation she receives in exchange is a prize beyond price. She learns selflessness and love; and she gains besides a great portion of joy when she lavishes on her nursling that which increases her own health, strength, and beauty. And upon my life, this feeling is the very foundation of a woman's happiness in life...

The mother, in nursing her child, performs the loftiest duty that society requires of her; but that society, in turn, must grant her culture, training, and help — a support she cannot do without in performing this sacred and noble duty...