the Tropics
p. 59 · Read in the full issue
The Baby’s Bottle in the Tropics
By Christina.
AFTER every meal make the nurse or cookboy wash the bottle in cold water, and boil it in a covered saucepan. This is later removed from the fire and placed in toto on a tray, on the baby’s food table, to await the next meal.
Should the mother be in poor health, and unable to attend to other details, it is better to have the rubber teat washed with cold water, and boiled with the bottle.
Be sure the boy knows how to “make a bottle” for the baby. Watch him make It and feed the baby (lying in his cot) until you are satisfied that he will do it pro perly if an emergency should arise. The mother of a young baby is very suscep tible to malaria in places where it is prevalent. Once I went to bed with a high temperature for several days, and had no woman neighbour to come and take charge of my home. The boy did everything for both baby and toddler, and they pulled through all right, though I should hate it to happen again.
For this reason one cannot beat Vi Lactogen for a young baby and Lactogen for an older one. The manufacture of a mixture with boiled milk, emulsion, and milk sugar, is not suited to unskilled black labour.
Don’t be in a hurry to discard the bottle for this same reason. I righteously de parted from its use for my first baby when he was nine months, and it was the greatest mistake I ever made with him.
A teething baby, or one up to eighteen months, being put on to new foods, will probably refuse to take food from a boy.
But he’ll always take a bottle. Raw egg (if baby is used to it) can be shaken up with the milk, or the Lactogen can be made very strong, and given from an old teat with a large hole. A baby resolutely refusing solid food, for teething or other reasons, can be tided over a bad few days in this way till he is ready to eat again.
No good comes of letting a baby go hungry in the tropics—contrary to all other advice from excellent people whose time-tables for feeding are drawn up to suit other climes. I know
a tropical doctor, who, like myself with regard to his elder child and mine, ob served carefully the recognised rules for hot weather, some of which are: A weaker mixture of food for hot weather, and not pushing food when the child was not hungry. Our two elder children are very light, with an appearance of being under fed, and not much appetite. The younger child in both cases was given a stronger mixture of bottle food, and not refused a second bottle if the child were hungry for it. Both our younger ones are really lovely specimens of childhood. This doc tor told me he had definitely concluded that so far from a weaker mixture being desirable for a child in the tropics, a stronger mixture than normal seemed indicated.
Also another reason for urging the con tinued use of a bottle is the ease with which an aperient can be administered.
Milk of magnesia is readily taken in a bottle. Also, should there be any fear that the baby may be developing malaria, two grains of powdered ethlycarbonate of quinine (tasteless), can be included in the bottle.
I am not saying that these instructions represent the ideal. Far from it. But if illness comes to you in the tropics and for some days the care of your baby de pends on a native boy, these hints will enable the baby to pull through the try ing days without loss of weight or sleep, or impairment to the system from under feeding.