The Young Mother: Management of Children in Regard to Health

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHILD'S DRESS

Dress serves three important purposes:-1. To cover us; 2. To defend us against cold; 3. To defend our bodies and limbs from injury. There is one more purpose of dress; in case of deformity, it seems to improve the appearance.

In all our arrangements in regard to dress, whether of children or of adults, we should ever keep in mind the above principles. The form, fashion, material, application, and quantity of all clothing, especially for infants, ought to be regulated by these three or four rules.

The subject of this chapter is one of so much importance, and embraces such a variety of items, that it will be more convenient, both to the reader and myself, to consider it under several minor heads.

SEC. 1. Swathing the Body.

Buffon, in his "Natural History," says that in France, an infant has hardly enjoyed the liberty of moving and stretching its limbs, before it is put into confinement. "It is swathed," says he, "its head is fixed, its legs are stretched out at full length, and its arms placed straight down by the side of its body. In this manner it is bound tight with cloths and bandages, so that it cannot stir a limb; indeed it is fortunate that the poor thing is not muffled up so as to be unable to breathe."

All swathing, except with a single bandage around the abdomen, is decidedly unreasonable, injurious and cruel. I do not pretend that the remarks of M. Buffon are fully applicable to the condition of infants in the United States. The good sense of the community nowhere permits us to transform a beautiful babe quite into an Egyptian mummy. Still there are many considerable errors on the subject of infantile dress, which, in the progress of my remarks, I shall find it necessary to expose.

The use of a simple band cannot be objected to. It affords a general support to the abdomen, and a particular one to the umbilicus. The last point is one of great importance, where there is any tendency to a rupture at this part of the body-a tendency which very often exists in feeble children. And without some support of this kind, crying, coughing, sneezing, and straining in any way, might greatly aggravate the evil, if not produce serious consequences.

But, in order to afford a support to the abdomen in the best manner, it is by no means necessary that the bandage should be drawn very tight. Two thirds of the nurses in this country greatly err in this respect, and suppose that the more tightly a bandage is drawn, the better. It should be firm, but yet gently yielding; and therefore a piece of flannel cut "bias," as it is termed, or, obliquely with respect to the threads of which it is composed, is the most appropriate material.

If the attention of the mother were necessary nowhere else, it would be indispensable in the application of this article. If she do not take special pains to prevent it, the erring though well meaning nurse may so compress the body with the bandage as to produce pain and uneasiness, and sometimes severe colic. Nay, worse evils than even this have been known to arise. When a child sneezes, or coughs, or cries, the abdomen should naturally yield gently; but if it is so confined that it cannot yield where the band is applied, it will yield in an unnatural proportion below, to the great danger of producing a species of rupture, no less troublesome than the one which such tight swathing is designed to prevent.

But besides the bandage already mentioned, no other restraint of the body and limbs of a child is at all admissible. The Creator has kindly ordained that the human body and limbs, and especially its muscles, or moving powers, shall be developed by exercise. Confine an arm or a leg, even in a child of ten years of age, and the limb will not increase either in strength or size as it otherwise would, because its muscles are not exercised; and the fact is still more obvious in infancy.

There is a still deeper evil. On all the limbs are fixed two sets of muscles; one to extend, the other to draw up or bend the limb. If you keep a limb extended for a considerable time, you weaken the one set of muscles; if you keep it bent, you weaken the other. This weakness may become so great that the limb will be rendered useless. There are cases on record-well authenticated-where children, by being obliged to sit in one place on a hard floor, have been made cripples for life. Hundreds of others are injured, though they may not become absolutely crippled.

I repeat it, therefore, their dress should be so free and loose that they may use their little limbs, their neck and their bodies, as much as they please; and in every desired direction. The practices of confining their arms while they lie down, for fear they should scratch themselves with their nails, and of pinning the clothes round their feet, are therefore highly reprehensible. Better that they should even occasionally scratch themselves with their nails, than that they should be made the victims of injurious restraint. Who would think of tying up or muffling the young lamb or kid? And even the young plant-what think you would be the effect, if its leaves and branches could not move gently with the soft breezes? Would the fluids circulate, and health be promoted: or would they stagnate, and a morbid, sickly and dwarfish state be the consequence?

Those whose object is to make infancy, as well as any other period of existence, a season of happiness, will not fail to find an additional motive for giving the little stranger entire freedom in the land whither he has so recently arrived, especially when he seems to enjoy it so much. Who can be so hardened as to confine him, unless compelled by the most pressing necessity?

SEC. 2. Form of the Dress.

On this subject a writer in the London Literary Gazette of some eight or ten years ago, lays down the following general directions, to which, in cold weather, there can be but one possible objection, which is, they are not alamode, and are not, therefore, likely to be followed.

"All that a child requires, so far as regards clothing, in the first month of its existence, is a simple covering for the trunk and extremities of the body, made of a material soft and agreeable to the skin, and which can retain, in an equable degree, the animal temperature. These qualities are to be found in perfection in fine flannel; and I recommend that the only clothing, for the first month or six weeks, be a square piece of flannel, large enough to involve fully and overlap the whole of the babe, with the exception of the head, which should be left totally uncovered. This wrapper should be fixed by a button near the breast, and left so loose as to permit the arms and legs to be freely stretched, and moved in every direction. It should be succeeded by a loose flannel gown with sleeves, which should be worn till the end of the second month; after which it may be changed to the common clothing used by children of this age."

The advantages of such a dress are, that the movements of the infant will be, as we have already seen, free and unrestrained, and we shall escape the misery of hearing the screams which now so frequently accompany the dressing and undressing of almost every child. No chafings from friction, moreover, can occur; and as the insensible perspiration is in this way promoted over the whole surface of the body, the sympathy between the stomach and skin is happily maintained. A healthy sympathy of this kind, duly kept up, does much towards preserving the stomach in a good state, and the skin from eruptions and sores.

But as I apprehend that christianity is not yet very deeply rooted in the minds and hearts of parents, I have already expressed my doubts whether they are prepared to receive and profit by advice at once rational and physiological. Still I cannot help hoping that I shall succeed in persuading mothers to have every part of a child's dress perfectly loose, except the band already referred to; and that should be but moderately tight.

Common humanity ought to teach us better than to put the body of a helpless infant into a vise, and press it to death, as the first mark of our attention. Who has not been struck with a strange inconsistency in the conduct of mothers and nurses, who, while they are so exceedingly tender towards the infant in some points as to injure it by their kindness, are yet almost insensible to its cries of distress while dressing it? So far, indeed, are they from feeling emotions of pity, that they often make light of its cries, regarding them as signs of health and vigor.

There can be no doubt, I confess, that the first cries of an infant, if strong, both indicate and promote a healthy state of the lungs, to a certain extent; but there will always be unavoidable occasions enough for crying to promote health, even after we have done all we can in the way of avoiding pain. They who only draw the...