OUR BABIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 671, 23 May 1914, Page 6

OUR BABIES.

Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. " It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom." PREVALENCE OF THE DUMMY. All over the world tfce dummy or comforter has been unsparingly condemned for many years as one of the greatest curses that the modern infant jg forced to put up with. Well-mean-ing but misguided mothers —and ona must regretfully admit a good many nurses of the eld school also —still teem to think that a baby is not comslete without its dummy, jut as certain savages are looked on as lacking something essential il not set off by pattooing and nose rings. Entering a train last week I was interested to hear two women, who were sitting on the seat behind me,engaged in a very earnest discussion of the dummy problem. THE DUMMY PROBLEM DISCUSSED. Mother No. I.—But what I can't understand is why they teauh them to use the dummy, even where the baby is quite good without anything, and actually fights against the horrid thing at first. You remember Sarah —, who used to be at school with us. Well, Bhe's right enough herself, but Bhe was telling me that Mrs got a dummy before the baby was born, and now you hardly ever see him without it, though he must be nearly a year and a-half old. She's in a fine old fix now, because if she takes away the dummy his fineer goes straight into hia mouth, and there he sucka and sucks. He's got so used to having something to suck all the time that it seems as if he couldn't do without it. and, as she says, it's hard to tell which is the worse habit when things have gone that length. Mother No. 2.—Well, isn't that funny; why it's just what my cousin M ra had to fight againat. The dummy gave her baby the habit of always sucking, and when it was taken away nothing would stop her sucking her fingers. She was just like a calf that has taken to sucking another calf's ears. She simply couldn't be broken off the habit until she was over two years old, and her mother says now that shu is sure it had a great deal to do with the child not thriving properly. She's going to have an operation for adenoids. Mother No. 3, That's the worst of it. They say that the dummy gives them adenoids. What I can't get over is that any mother would actually set to work to train her baby t" use a thing that she knows is wrong. What do they think that the mothers did before dummies were invented? Besides, look at the babies at th« Karitane Hospital. You never see a dummy there, though they say most of them have them when they go in. If I had my way I'd make a law . . One can only guess what the "law" was to be. I did not hear, because the train came to a station, and both women got out. However, what I wondered at myself was that our fellow women should need a law and a policeman and a magistrate to stop them from ill-treating their children, It seems rather humiliating that any of us should have to ask Parliament to pass "laws" to keep us straight in matters of this kind. WHAT THE PLUNEKT NURSES SAY. Only lest week more than a third of the monthly report of one of Dune' din Plunket Nurses was devoted to pointing out how extremely difficult she finds it in practice to induce some mothers to give up the dummy. Mothers who will faithfully carry out instructions as to the preparing and keeping of the baby's milk, and who even go half-way towards the admission of a reasonable amount of , fresh, cool air into their houses, some- ! times continue using thß dummy in spite of e?ertyhing that can be brought against it. As th 9 nurse said: "Some of these mothers will seem to agree with yuu, and will even tell you that they have given the dummy up and thrown it away, just to please you, but it is rather upsetting to find the baby sucking away at the same eld dummy if you happen to drop in accidentally." Turning to en article which appeared in this column some year 3 ago, I find, curiously enough, that I was impelled to write then also by a chance conversation overheard in a train. As the arguments used are still strictly relevant en 3 applicable, I shall reproduce a portion of the article unchanged THE UNSPEAKABLE DUMMY. Travelling by train a few weeks ago in the same compartment as ourselves was a young mother and a beautiful little baby boy of about fifteen months He had the inevitable dummy, with

ring attached, hanging a ord down the front of hi-: ~rega. We were sitting near by, and the little fellow,who was full of life and energy and who was playing about in the carriage, soon made friends with us. Naturally we began to chat with Jis mother, and she told us the baby was her only child, and an only grandson as well, so he was very much the apple of and she was evidently most devoted to him. The lady who was with me remarked that it was a pity he had a dummy, saying that by using it there wa3 a great risk of deforming the child's mouth and ruining his teeth. The mother replied that she knew some people said dummies were not good, but that if my friend had a baby she would probably use one too when she became cross. "At anvrate," she said, looking with pride at tha beautifully-made, plump little chap with rogy cheeks and shining eyes, "it has not done fcira any harm so far, has it?" LACK OP LOGIC. It is one of the amazing points of viBW of mothers that they always spaak in this way. They are quite prepared to persist in a wrong course until thev can see actual definite harm which by that time is more or less irreparable. Women constantly 3ay: "I know such and such a child who bad a dummy, and his teeth are all right." They don't realise that the child's jaws, teeth, and digestion would have been still better had no dummy been used, and that for one case where they can see no damage there would be a dozen cases where the evil effects would be clear to them iO pointed out.