Maternity

“ To them, for long ages, the approach to motherhood has been by the most intense and exquisite love and longing, by the Supreme Desire, the overmastering demand for a child. Every thought they held in connection with the processes of maternity was open to the day, simple yet sacred. ”

“ Statistics and physicians from their observation agree in this, that the bearing of children by normal women, so far from being injurious to health, is as healthful, stimulating, and invigorating a function as the blooming of a flower, or the shedding of fruit, and a mother is no worse for the experience of maternity than is the plant or the tree for the fruit it bears. ”

“ On the other hand, when maternity is accepted as a privilege, and love instead of bitterness reigns in the prospective mother’s heart, the babe is born tranquil, normal, healthy. Returning to the phrase, efficiency in motherhood, it is good business to bear normal children.
In this day, the woman who frets, rebels and weeps during pregnancy commands little sympathy and practical help from her husband and family. ”

“ Hundreds of rapacious old maids would be seizing all sorts and all sizes of babies from agonized mothers, and asserting for themselves the hallowed duties of maternity. Our infant days would have been days of ceaseless motion. ”

“ But when we consider woman from the point of view of her maternal functions, her physiological, psychological, and intellectual nature assumes an entirely changed aspect; for maternity is the natural function of the female, the end to which she has been created. Lofty sentiments, complete altruism, and far-sighted intelligence develop all of a sudden when she becomes a mother. ”

“ Educated people derive their ideas of maternity for the most part, either from the experience of their own set, or from visits to impressive hospitals where women of the upper classes receive the advantages of modern science and modern nursing. From these charming pictures they derive their complacent views of the beauty of motherhood and their confidence for the future of the race. ”

“ Then pregnancy by every true woman will be desired, and instead of being a period of disease, suffering and direful forebodings, will become a period of health, exalted pleasure and holiest anticipations. Motherhood will be deemed the choicest of earth's blessings; women will rejoice in a glad maternity and for any self-denial will be compensated by healthy, happy, buoyant, grateful children. ”

“ Let me say to the woman who is pregnant for the first time, the experiences of the pregnant state should cause you no fear, worry, or anxiety. Giving birth to a baby is a perfectly natural, normal procedure, and if you are in reasonable health—if your physician tells you you are a fairly normal woman—then you can dismiss further thought of danger and go on your way rejoicing. For thousands of years maternity has been women's exclusive profession and no doubt will continue to be many ages hence. ”

“ This God-implanted paternal and maternal instinct, in their relation to the normally developing sexual natures, are so strong that matured young people are willing to assume every burden connected with maintaining a home and every sacrifice incident to raising a family of children.
Maternity not an affliction.—No normal wife, properly educated, who has the right view of marriage, looks upon maternity as an affliction. ”

“ All these considerations which refer to normal individuals, represent a series of hygienic laws regarding maternity, which may [Pg 174] be summed up as follows: excellence in procreation belongs to those mothers who have already attained the age at which the individual organism has completed its development, and before it has entered upon its involutive period; the mother must herself have a normal weight; the pregnancies must be separated by long intervals; and during the last weeks of pregnancy it is necessary that the mother should have the opportunity of complete rest. ”

“ I repeat that parents, and especially mothers, should be acquainted with the truths of physiology. [Pg 33] There is in the pure sentiment of maternity a special Divine gift of unselfishness and profound devotion to the well-being of husband and children. This God-given power enables a wife and mother to comprehend and apply this knowledge with the impersonality of wisdom. The awful aberrations of our sexual nature excite a deep pity which inevitably seeks for a remedy. ”

“ Yet, on the strength of this feeling, mothers are apt to believe that the very fact of maternity confers on them the knowledge of how best to rear their offspring. They resent almost as an insult the suggestion that a certain amount of study is absolutely necessary to obtain this knowledge. ”

“ Mark! the woman, whose modesty is shocked at every effort, however truthful, earnest and delicate it may be, to enlighten husbands and wives in regard to the natural laws designed to govern Maternity, and the relation that leads to it, does not feel at all shocked by ante-natal murder. ”

“ For the birth itself, the mother should be in experienced hands, preferably those of a highly trained and certified midwife or maternity nurse such as Queen Charlotte’s or the London Hospital supplies, one who is experienced in all that has to be done in normal, healthy circumstances, and who can detect at once any necessity for specialized help. ”

“ Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. ”

“ But the evils of excessive birth control are very real. There is first the individual—every woman is better in body and mind for child bearing—the periodic completion of the maternal cycle brings out the best, preserves youth and maintains vital contact with life. Maternity gives to woman her most beautiful attributes. ”

“ That may be seen by anyone who has read the letters from mothers lately published under the title of Maternity by the Women's Co-operative Guild; there is still far more misery caused by having too many babies than by having too few ”

“ Maternity stimulates her intelligence and sharpens her senses, explains and exalts those characteristics which have hitherto constituted her inferiority until they become signs of superiority when considered from the point of view of the reproduction of the species.
A lessened sensibility enables woman to bear with greater ease the pains inherent to childbirth; her refractoriness to all kinds of variation—also that of a degenerate nature—serves to correct morbid heredity and to bring back the race, which owes its continuation to her, to its normal state. ”

“ That it is the previous life of the mother—the whole of it, from her birth to the birth of the child—which almost entirely determines what her danger, her difficulty, and her pain during childbirth shall be. Her easy or difficult labor, in fact, is almost entirely her own work. Her conduct during gestation, it is true, is more immediately influential in the result than remoter periods, and bears more greatly upon the future life of her offspring than even upon herself. ”

“ It lies in the choice of every expectant mother to journey through the months of pregnancy with dissatisfaction and resentment or with joy and serenity. "The child will be born and laid in your arms to be fed, cared for, and reared, whether you weep or smile through the months of waiting." ”

“ We are beginning to realize that one “born mother” in a thousand is not enough to leaven the maternal mass. And out of this discovery has risen a demand, which comes largely from women themselves, for education in motherhood, practical, sincere preparation for woman’s exclusive profession. ”

“ From the moment of conception, during the months of gestation, at the time of childbirth and after, changes of great interest take place in the germ of human life and in the body of the mother. Her body is marvelously fitted for the reception and development of the ovum, the embryo and the fetus through the various stages of fertilization, germination, development, maturity, to the time of the eventual exit of the child into the outer world to begin its own independent life. ”

“ Maternal Solicitude and Superstition.—The wonderful stories that are told are nearly all in the older literature and are much more reasonably explained on the score of coincidence than on that of any possible direct connection of cause and effect. Mothers, then, may be reassured and made to understand that the better their own health, the less they worry about their condition, the more likely is their pregnancy to terminate favorably with a perfectly healthy offspring. ”

“ If the indirect connection that exists between the mother and child were better understood, and more justly appreciated, we should, doubtless, hear much less of the influence of the imagination of the mother upon the body of her infant, and thus one of the greatest of the attendant evils of pregnancy would be removed. ”

“ Upon the care displayed in the management of the corporeal and mental health of the mother during the whole period of pregnancy, the ultimate constitution of the offspring greatly depends. All the surroundings and employments of the pregnant woman should be such as conduce to cheerfulness and equanimity. Above all, she should avoid the presence of disagreeable and unsightly objects. Vivid and unpleasant impressions should be removed as soon as possible by quiet diversion of the mind. All causes of excitement should be carefully guarded against. ”

“ The origin of the baby is exactly coincident with the fusion of the male and female cells. Furthermore, the sex of the child and any inherited traits and characteristics are also established at this decisive moment. No amount of dieting, exercise or mental effort on the part of the expectant mother can alter or influence them in the smallest degree, for the father has made his complete contribution toward the creation of the new being and the mother, also, has made hers, except for nourishment which she provides throughout pregnancy. ”

“ Although the childbearing function is the origin and source of the human race, existing throughout the ages, the processes connected with it have only in recent years been clearly understood.
Our present-day knowledge of the processes connected with childbirth makes it easy to understand how, in the early ages of the human race, the function was a normal function, with little or no danger to mother or child. ”

“ A mother may, during the period of gestation, exercise some influence, by her own voluntary mental and physical action, either unwittingly or purposely, in determining the traits and tendencies of her offspring. ”

“ Some women do not stop to define the wonderful, mysterious thrill which passes over them as they hold the precious gift close to their hearts for the first time. With other women a sense of responsibility, beautiful and almost divine, comes even before the child is born.
Barring deformities and constitutional defects, the average baby is pliable in the hands of the mother. The preceding chapters have told how a mother can give her child a fair start by intelligent care and feeding. ”

“ Of course the father and the mother should be in the best possible physical and mental condition during the time of conception and even before conception, and the mother should take the very best care of herself—she should be in good health and as calm a spirit as possible during the entire period of gestation. For the general health and condition of the mother does influence the child. ”

“ The woman about to become a mother, or with her new-born infant upon her bosom, should be the object of trembling care and sympathy wherever she bears her tender burden, or stretches her aching limbs. ”

“ That the suffering is at all essential to the mother's love for her child I cannot believe. Under certain circumstances, as for example when the Cesarean operation is performed before the onset of labor, the delivery is painless ”

“ As things are to-day among British stock, [3] it is the very exceptional women who find birth an entirely easy process of which the pain is trivial, and this is chiefly due to the bony structure fixed and limited in size, which stands as a gateway of pain between the infant and the outer world, between the young wife and her motherhood. ”

“ Most of us can look back to the day when weaning the family baby was almost a domestic tragedy. The mother, more through fear than sentiment, wept and declared that, once her child did not nurse from the breast, life would never be quite the same! ”

“ These sacrifices take the form, for the most part, of support and protection, and begin soon after conception on the part of the mother—as the pregnant woman usually requires much greater solicitude and care on the part of the husband than she does on other occasions. ”

“ I will now show the several situations of the child in the mother’s womb, according to the 111different times of pregnancy, by which those that are contrary to nature, and are the chief cause of all ill labours, will be more easily conceived by the understanding midwife. It ought, therefore, in the first place, to be observed, that the infant, as well male as female, is generally situated in the midst of the womb ”

“ From the time of conception until the birth of her child, the mother is carefully taken care of by our medical authorities. She must lead a quiet secluded life without any excitement and must take special treatments and foods so as to build up in herself and her unborn child good health and a balanced nervous system. ”