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Some Kitchen Kinks: Milk

The Proper Food for Babies is Mother's Milk. - No sensible mother needs advice on this point. If she is fairly healthy, her breast will give all the nourishment the child should have until it begins to cut its teeth-the sixth or eighth month. Up to this time it is a sin to give an infant one morsel of solid food of any kind, or anything but breast milk (if the mother is healthy) except water in moderate quantity occasionally, but never soon after nursing.

Many infants are killed every year by bringing them to the table with the family and giving them a little bit of this, that, and the other-meat, vegetables, pie, pickles, etc., which the little stomach is not fitted for.

They are killed just as surely, though not so quickly, as if they had been fed poison out of a drug store. 66 When the baby that is fed this way sickens and dies, it is said that the baby died of "diarrhea," or dysentery," or "cholera infantum," or summer complaint," or "teething," or "convulsions," or "brain fever." 66 But these are only names for the result of poisoning with unfit food.

Wait till the baby gets its teeth before you put food into its mouth that needs to be chewed.

If the Breast Milk Gives Out, or becomes thin or watery, or if the mother has consumption or any other long-standing sickness, the baby must be put on the bottle and fed with cow's milk. ...

As soon as the milk is received, take what is to be used for the baby and "scald" it. Don't let it boil.

A good way is to set a pan of cold water on the stove and put the vessel containing baby's milk into this pan; just as soon as the water comes to a boil, take it off. This amounts to what is called "sterilizing" or pasteurizing" the milk. Add pinch of baking soda to the hot milk -a little less than half a teaspoonful to a quart. 66 a If the milk was sweet and hadn't begun to "turn" when it was received, it will keep sweet for twentyfour hours or more after being treated this way, even in hot weather. But, of course, it should be kept in a close-covered vessel or fruit jar or stoppered bottle. Whatever it is kept in should be thoroughly scalded -cover, stopper, and all-just before the milk is put in.

If you have an ice box or refrigerator to put the milk in, or can in any other way keep it from "turning," it is better to let it stand for about six hours and then pour off the upper half for the baby's milk. This should then be "scalded" and soda added, as before described. If you WHAT THE HOME NURSE OUGHT TO KNOW 1143 can't do this, a little cream should be added to the baby's milk-say one tablespoonful of cream to two or three of the milk.

To make this nearly like breast milk, add two cupfuls of water that has been boiled to each cupful of milk and enough white sugar to make it as sweet as breast milk. (Milk sugar, if perfectly pure, is better than white or cane sugar.) If this mixture is too rich, the baby will vomit it in curds or lumps, or it will pass through the bowels in white flakes and shreds. If this happens, add more boiled water to the mixture until you find just what strength the baby's stomach will stand-what it can digest.