It should not be too readily assumed that the mother is unable to nurse her infant. Perseverance, more meat and milk and perhaps lactagol for the mother, often work wonders. On the other hand, though there may be plenty of milk, the child may suffer from dyspepsia which is sometimes corrected by restricting the mother’s food or making her take more exercise.
A nursing mother or wet-nurse does not require an extra or a rich dietary, but discrimination in the selection of her food. The meal-hours should be regular, and late meals avoided. The thirst to which nursing mothers are liable is best appeased by milk-and- water, barely-water, toast-and-water, and similar beverages. Stimulants are best avoided.
DIET 2.- For children brought up by hand. The best substitute for mother’s milk is good milk from a good dairy, diluted with boiled (not boiling) water half and half, and enriched by the addition of sugar (sugar of milk if possible) and cream. The milk should be scalded – either by heating over the flame until the first small bubbles begin to form (at 160o) or by standing for ten minutes in a vessel of boiling water (water kept boiling). Three- quarters of an ounce of sugar (a tablespoonful and a half) dissolved in 18 ounces of boiled water may be mixed as wanted with an equal quantity of the scalded milk and then given from a modern feeding-bottle with a simple rubber teat. Avoid all tubes. Be sure that the hole in the teat is the right size so that the child gets the milk neither too fast nor too slowly. The bottle and teat should be thoroughly washed out after each meal and kept in a basin of cold water. The child’s mouth ought also to be cleansed out with fresh water after every feed. Under three months the child should receive 2 1/2 oz. of the milk mixture every two and a half hours, at three months 3 oz. every three hours. The interval then remains the same up to six months but the amount is increased an ounce every month. At six months the interval should be four hours, and by that time the half-and-half proportion should give way to two of milk and one of water.
DIET 3.- Children that cannot be breast-fed are often very difficult to feed by the bottle. If the half-and-half milk mixture just described is not digested, try first citrating the milk by the addition of a grain of sodium citrate to every ounce of milk and then diluting with water as before, If the child still cannot digest the milk, try condensed milk (Nestle’s), adding a teaspoonful of it to three tablespoonfuls of water, and further adding (because of the deficiency of fat) a teaspoonful of cream to each feed. It may even be necessary to preptonize the milk. Fairchild’s peptonizing powders are the best known, and directions for their use are supplied with them. In some cases milk in any form disagrees and then whey must be tried, fortified by Mellin’s food, (follow the Mellin directions, substituting whey for the milk-and-water).
In all cases of artificial feeding, and in many of breast feeding, it is in the highest degree desirable to give the child fruit-juice (juice of oranges, grapes, etc.) diluted with water and sweetened, a teaspoonful two or three times a day. This helps the bowels and also supplies some of the vitamins or accessory food factors that the system requires.
12. Diet from Nine to Twelve Months Old.
DIET 4.- Weaning should take place normally at the end of the ninth month. If the mother’s health flags in any way or if her milk ceases to satisfy the infant’s requirements, weaning may have to take place earlier. It should not under any circumstances be delayed much beyond the tenth month. “Never wean a child in hot weather if you can avoid it” (R. Hutchison), for fear of epidemic Diarrhoea. By this time it will be possible to introduce starch into the child’s dietary. Indeed, the appearance of the milk teeth is probably a sign that starch can now be digested. From the time the child has two or three teeth he should be encouraged to gnaw a hard crust or bite at a whole (raw) apple. This promotes the development of the jaws and lessens the likelihood of adenoids developing.
DIET 5.- For weaned child above nine months old the following arrangement may be adopted.
First Meal, 7 a.m.-A breakfast-cupful of prepared food, such as Chapman’s, Mellin’s or Allenbury’s No.3, prepared as directed on the tin, or Robinson’s groats with milk. If the bowel are confined at any time, a rather larger proportion of the food, and less of the milk, should be used; or the reverse if the bowels are relaxed.
Second Meal, 10.30 a.m. – A breakfast-cupful of milk. A teaspoonful of lime-water may be added when the milk has appeared to produce discomfort.
Third Meal, 2.p.m. – The yoke of one egg, well beaten up in a teaspoonful of milk. Beef-tea occasionally as a change.
Fourth Meal, 5.30 p.m. – Same as the first.
Fifth Meal, 10 p.m. – Same as the second. Water to be given freely between meals.
No food of any kind should be given between the meals, which should, therefore, be made sufficiently large to meet the requirements of the system, always stopping short of over- repletion. A healthy child from ten to twelve months only requires from a pint and a half to a quart of milk in the twenty- four hours.
BEEF-TEA may be made in the following way : Put half a pound (or a pound, according to the strength required) of rump steak cut up into small pieces, into a covered enamelled saucepan with one pint of cold water. Let this stand in a cold or cool place for four or five hours, and then by the side of a fire till the temperature should approach but not reach the boiling-point. It is then fit for use.
The meat used should be freshly-slain, and divested beforehand of all fat or gristle; otherwise a greasy taste is given to the beef-tea, which cannot be afterwards removed by skimming. Only enamelled saucepans should be used. In re-warming beef-tea which has been left to cool, care must be taken to warm it only up to the point at which it is to be served. On no account should it be allowed to boil.
When children, from long use of it, become tired of beef-tea, it may be seasoned with some vegetable product – celery, or celary- seeds, which should be strained off before using – when, possessing an entirely new flavour, it will generally be eaten with zest.
13. From Twelve to Eighteen Months Old.
DIET 6. First Meal, 7.30 a.m. – A rusk or a slice of stale Hovis bread with a breakfast-cupful of new milk. The bread may soaked in the milk; but if the child has teeth, it should be well masticated dry, and milk taken in sips. The teeth and gums are improved by proper employment. See the Section 62, “Decay of the Teeth.”
Second Meal, 11 a.m.- A drink of milk, with a plain biscuit or thin slice of Hovis bread-and-butter, or bread-and-dripping.
Third Meal, 1.30 p.m. – A pudding like the one recommended for the third meal in Diet 6. or, as a variety, a teaspoonful of good beef-tea (a pound of meat to the pint) or of beef-gravy or mutton or chicken-broth or marmite, with rusk or stale bread. A good table-spoonful of light farinaceous pudding with baked apple or stewed prunes may follow the beef-tea.
Fourth Mean 6 p.m. – Same as the first.
In cases of debility, or when there exists any exhausting discharge, a little milk may be given at about 10 p.m. But in good health nothing is required after 6 p.m. The sooner a child becomes accustomed to sleep all night without food the better. When however, he wakes in the morning, refreshed by his night’s rest, he should not be compelled to remain fasting for an hour or more, but his breakfast should be prepared early.
14 From Eighteen Months to Three Years Old and Upwards.
DIET 7.- First Meal, 7.30 a.m. – A breakfast cupful of find oatmeal porridge and milk. Lightly boiled egg. A rusk or a good slice of stale whole-meal bread.
Second Meal, 11 a.m. – A cup of milk.
Third Meal, 1.30 p.m. – A small slice of underdone roast mutton, or fish, or chicken, one well-mashed potato, with a little gravy as it runs from the cut surfaces of the joint. For drink, water or milk-and water.
Fourth Meal, 6 p.m. – A breakfast-cupful of milk and wholemeal bread-and-butter; occasionally some plain cake. A healthy child, after the age of eighteen months, should sleep from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. without waking and require nothing beyond the above.
Special care must be taken to see that the child chews properly.
The morning and evening meals should always consist principally of milk. Tea and coffee should be entirely withheld from young children. Indeed, these beverages are better not given at all till after adult age. Cocoa, however, properly prepared, is a suitable beverage at any period of life after infancy, and may often made with milk and water, replace pure milk where this seems to cause sickness, pale stools, loss of appetite, and even slight fever. Sweets should be allowed in the strictest moderation – good toffee or chocolate once a week, the child being required to brush the teeth immediately after.
Vitamins, of which one hears so much nowadays, are food elements or “accessory food factors” which are essential to health and nutrition. The three chief vitamins are numbered A, B, and C. Vitamins A is abundant in animal fats, and therefore the child who has abundant butter, dripping, milk, and egg-yoke is well supplied. vitamin B is abundant in wholemeal cereals – hence the desirability of an early introduction of wholemeal bread into the diet; also in egg-yoke and marmite. Vitamin C is contained in milk and potato. It is also, and most abundantly, contained in fresh fruit and in greens cooked for a short time. From two years these articles should be added to the diet, especially oranges, apples, grape-fruit, tomato (these are cooked, not be boiling, but always by steaming, which preserves the precious salts of the vegetables).
LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS; MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS; LICENTIATE IN MIDWIFERY, LONDON AND EDINBURGH, ETC. PHYSICIAN TO THE READING AND BERKSHIRE HOMOEOPATHIC DISPENSARY.
Author of "The Stepping Stone to Homeopathy and Health,"
"Manual of Homoeopathic Treatment". Editor of "The Homoeopathic World."