Getting Ready to be a Mother: A Little Book of Information and Advice for the Young Woman who is Looking Forward to Motherhood
9781465675156
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The childbearing function is a wonderfully complex physiological phenomenon. It affects and is influenced by almost every organ and tissue in the human body. The body of the female child from the earliest weeks of its life in its mother’s womb, while receiving nourishment from her body, through infancy and the years of childhood to maturity is being gradually molded and developed for the special carrying out of this one function—the crowning and most vital act of woman. 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. But with the gradual growth of the race, with the beginning of the struggle for existence and the appearance and spreading of disease, all interfering with the natural growth and development of the body, the function of child bearing ceased to be a normal function, as designed by its Maker, and became one fraught with dangers to both mother and child. Nevertheless, through ignorance of these changes brought on by civilization, the idea that the function is a normal process, the risk slight and fatalities infrequent and when occurring, inevitable, is the almost universal belief to-day. The dangers to the life of the mother and child in the carrying out of this function are well known to the medical profession, as well as the fact that for the most part they are preventable. Yet in spite of this knowledge, each year brings forth, unchanging, its toll in fatalities and countless numbers of invalid mothers, with the inevitable destroying factor of the happiness of the home. Statistics are available to show that less than half of all pregnancies are normal and that the illness and loss of human life, from causes associated with childbirth, are distressingly and needlessly high. Failure to get these facts to the public; failure to teach lay women the dangers to be avoided and the methods of protection, is one very important reason why there has been no decrease in the high mortality rates. During the past ten years, maternity hospitals and private and public health bodies, in various parts of the country, have obtained wonderful results, locally, in reducing infant and maternal mortality, by giving to large groups of prospective mothers information concerning the common dangers associated with childbirth and how they might best be prevented. If every expectant mother, no matter what her status or location, followed the simple, practical advice which this book offers, the rate of illness and death among our mothers and babies would be materially lessened. This book, therefore, so complete in its information on every subject pertaining to the mother during pregnancy and confinement and of the care of the newborn infant, should be far reaching in its beneficial results.
