Radiant Motherhood/Chapter 10

We cannot reason with our cells, for they know so much more than we do that they cannot understand us; but though we cannot reason with them, we can find out what they have been most accustomed to, and what therefore they are most likely to expect; and we can see that they get this, as far as it is in our power to give it them, and may then generally leave the rest to them.

Samuel Butler

TO far too many women the time when they are carrying a child is a period of strain and semi-invalidism, a time filled not only with surprises and difficulties, but too often coloured with actual distress and ill-health. This should not be. The time of prospective motherhood should be one of buoyancy, health, physical activity and mental vitality. The low standard of health which the modern woman. tolerates is deplorable.

But to whom can the young mother-to-be ​turn for advice and assistance? Such healthy, happy, prospective motherhood does not come by instinct in our city life. Those around her, older than she, who have had children of their own may perhaps be able to give her a hint here and a little piece of advice there, which to some extent may alleviate her difficulty or pierce with a faint shadow of light the gloom of perplexity in the ever deepening unknown into which she is entering for the first time; but nearly all such women have themselves gone blindly and individually through this period of immense significance and mystery without having had any rational help from one devoted to the maintenance of health.

Almost every book written to advise the coming mother is written by a doctor of disease, with very few exceptions by doctors who tolerate what is, in my opinion, a disgracefully low standard of general health in women. A distinguished gynecologist who, in cross-examination before a commission persisted in maintaining that the "daily morning sickness" which is so prevalent in women who are carrying a child is "physiologically right and natural" (indeed, he implied almost that it was necessary) represents an attitude of mind very general and capable of far-reaching hypnotic injury to the community as a whole.

By far the best and sanest book available for ​healthy women is one to which I have already referred, namely Tokology, by Dr. Alice Stockham, but this book has its inaccuracies and its drawbacks, and even its pages are too much occupied with the wretched and handicapping troubles which women do experience in large numbers, but which should not be.

Nevertheless, to allow a young girl or woman to enter upon these months of trial without making clear to her what she has to face, is cruel indeed. For a sensitive woman the experience, even at its best, and when most free from incapacities is, yet incredibly and penetratingly more terrible than she anticipated. The more sensitive and more conscious she is, the deeper and profounder may be her joy in her coming motherhood, but, at the same time, the more intense the physical experiences through which she must pass.

The modern sensitive young woman does not take things blindly and patiently and with resignation, with a pious belief in her own inferiority, which may have helped to dull and moderate the sensations of her grandmothers. The more evolved she is, the more she may be willing to bow to natural law, but the less is she content to suffer wanton cruelties imposed upon her by ignorance, stupidity or coercion.

Many are the midwives, maternity nurses and medical practitioners with whom I have ​discussed such matters, and from whom, often incognito, I have asked advice. I may say that none gave all the necessary advice, not one gave one-tenth of what is in this book, only one or two gave any necessary simple advice in the sympathetic and understanding fashion desirable, and only one or two appeared to have any clear generalizations or scientific understanding of the facts about which I asked. The resignation, the shrugging of the shoulders in the face of things which would otherwise make one weep, or the cheerful braving out or pretending that things are not as bad as they are, which is the general attitude of mind of the maternity nurse is little more helpful than that of the practitioner. Concerning many of the practical facts of the later months of pregnancy and actual birth, and the succeeding weeks of recovery, the properly trained midwife seems on the whole wiser than the average general practitioner, wiser even than the specialist who may come at a crisis, but who does not watch his patient through the succeeding weeks.

Many young women who have recently been mothers have told me of the mental and physical horror which they then experienced, and of the added horror that they should feel horror. They have asked me to generalize, if it is possible, from their cases in such a way as to help others who enter upon maternity's difficulties for the ​first time, so that they may at least be spared that terrible sense of isolation and of exceptional failure when they experience one by one the things which are inevitable, or the things which are, by our artificial lives, so frequently imposed.

The bearing of a child very often may be complicated by actual disease, and then requires, of course, expert medical attention. With those who are in any sense actually ill, and who should be in the hands of a doctor, I am not here dealing, for, in this respect, as throughout my other books, I desire only to write of health for the healthy so that they may have sufficient knowledge to maintain their health and raise the vitality of the race.

I may say here that, even for the healthiest, it is very advisable, not only for her first, but for every succeeding pregnancy, that a woman should be examined and measured by some wise and healthy-minded medical practitioner or midwife at least once during the first three months and twice again during the last three months, but that, for the first baby, it would be better to go at least every month for examination. In that way, the various insidious disturbances of the excretory system, and other fundamental things which may go a little wrong, even in an otherwise healthy woman, can be detected immediately and dealt with. Many ​however, find a great difficulty in bringing themselves to do this.

Undoubtedly it is much better for the prospective mother to go to a specialist, old enough to be wise and experienced and mellow, and yet young and virile and active enough to be acquainted with modern knowledge, and healthy and clean enough to look for and to desire health and normality in those who come for advice.

This should pre-eminently be the special field for women doctors, but there is not nearly a sufficient body of them with the necessary qualifications to meet the requirements of the community, and I should like to see a new profession created for women who, to the experience and the training of first-class midwives, have added a sufficient training in general medicine to be specialized to advise the healthy prospective mother, and to be able to detect at once anything which should necessitate handing her on to the doctor of disease. Such practitioners should rank in status somewhere between the cultivated midwife of gentle birth (such as a Queen Charlotte's Hospital nurse) and the medical woman. Thus the prospective mother would be spared that hard and bitter contact with one who has become myopic in the observation of disease, and would be able to go to someone specially trained to encourage health. Meanwhile, as this is but a bright picture of ​what may come in the future (and that will come if women make a sufficient demand for it) it may spare many women distress if I set out the physical difficulties and peculiarities which are most liable to occur with a healthy woman.

From the welter of accounts of the effects of pregnancy, I have disentangled into three groups those which normal women may have to face. The difficulties are:—

1. Those nature-imposed; these are essential; they cannot be avoided by the healthiest woman. They can be perhaps, to some extent, mitigated. They are things which the coming mother must be helped through and over; she cannot be saved from them.
2. Those entirely artificial; these are quite needless and are the results of either ignorance or our gross disregard of known facts, and can be entirely eradicated.
3. Those which are to-day very usual, but which knowledge and a better mode of life may entirely conquer.

Now to consider first the third group: those which are general, but which a knowledge could or should conquer.

One of the first signs that she is to become a mother, and one of the most usual experiences of a young woman when this time begins, is the daily recurrence of that penetrating nausea ​and sickness usually after she has risen in the morning, called "Morning Sickness." This is so usual that medical practitioners rely on it to some extent as a sign of pregnancy. It is described in almost every book for the prospective mother, and, as I have mentioned (p. 82), it is sometimes even maintained by distinguished gynecologists as a physiological function, i.e., a normal function.

Now this is a very nauseating and wretched experience to the majority of women, and it is one which, I maintain, is entirely imposed by ignorance, wrong living and the general hypnotic effect of others' perverted views on the woman's system. In those women whose internal organs are improperly placed or somewhat malformed, it occurs as a physiological result of pressure or other disturbance. In true health there is no physiological reason whatever for the morning sickness, and a woman who lives as she should live during the time of her coming motherhood need not experience it. This should, in the next generation, be entirely conquered, because it is to a very large extent caused by allowing, even forcing to wear corsets, girls when they are still unformed and developing. Those women who have never worn corsets in the whole of their lives, and who dress as they should dress, and do as they should do during the months when they are becoming mothers, ​seldom experience morning sickness. Though there are some who, when they know the child is coming, discard their corsets too late, and these may still experience this unpleasant feature. The extraordinary adaptability and vitality in a woman's system, however, is a remarkable thing, and even those who begin later in life than they should to train for motherhood may yet accomplish much.

Granted a healthy, well-formed body, a previous life of normal activity, sensible attention to the following points will insure complete freedom from morning sickness in all but the exceptional and pre-disposed:—

(a) Discard every scrap of heavy or constricting clothing, wearing only the lightest garments hung from the shoulders entirely.

As I said in Married Love the standard of dressing for the prospective mother, whose garments should be of the lightest wool and silk if possible, and should be so lightly hung that a butterfly can walk the length of her body without tearing its wings.

(b) Discard all rich, heavy and over-cooked foods, such as pastries and hot cakes, dried peas and beans, rich game or highly seasoned dishes, and live as much as possible on uncooked foods and simple milk puddings, stewed fruit, lightly cooked meat and fish, with the largest obtainable quantity of very fresh ripe fruit.

​(c) Start the day not with tea, but with the juice of two or three oranges squeezed into a tumbler.

If she does these things a normal woman may go through the whole nine months without experiencing one single moment of nausea, as many a woman has done.

A retardation of the action of the bowels or constipation is very frequent, and is a cause of many other ill-effects. A right diet such as I advise, adding for this purpose honey and brown bread, does much to prevent it; if it exists in spite of this, take suitable bending exercises (see also page 82), even a warm hydrostatic douche (using a douche-can with a little common salt in the water), but do not take regular drugs or aperients."

Another of the very frequent experiences of the mother who is carrying a child, particularly towards the later months, is the enlargement of the veins of the legs and ankles and the formation of varicose veins. These may become very serious if neglected, and even if the woman is being doctored, unless, at the same time, she regularly follows the proper healthy method of dieting and living. In addition to the dieting and clothing described above, which will make her almost certain to be immune from varicose veins, she should take warm comfortable sitz baths every evening, and ​she should lie down for at least half an hour or an hour in the middle of the day or early evening with her feet raised a few inches above the level of her head.

One of the most serious difficulties, felt even by those who avoid all other drawbacks, is sleeplessness, particularly in the last month or two when the activities of the child may be very disturbing. In this, much depends on the position in which the child is lying, and sometimes the position of the child can be improved by massage and manipulation by a trained midwife or doctor. Something also can be done by the mother herself through her mental attitude and hand touch on the child, and also by taking hot sitz baths nightly before going to bed. Still more, however, is accomplished by right diet, clothes, exercise and happiness (see also Chapter XII).

The habit of taking aspirin regularly or in large quantities, which too many women indulge in if sleepless during this time, is extremely bad both for the child and for the mother. Drugs of any sort should not be appealed to. If it is possible during these later months, sleep will be much more refreshing, and the advantage will be very great both to the coming child and the mother, if her bed can be arranged on a verandah or out of doors, but it must not be forgotten that towards the end of the period ​the expectant mother ought not to be out of ear-shot of someone.

Now to consider the second group of disabilities; those entirely the result of artificial outlook and condition. Among these must be classed the inability to walk any distance or to take part in active work of any sort. This is partly imposed by the hesitation of a woman to be seen at this time, and particularly to face the vulgar and leering attitude of the general public, and it is partly also due to the general heaviness or strain on the muscles or to the presence of varicose veins. If these have, by the methods just described, been almost or entirely avoided, she will find that her natural activity is much less reduced than it would otherwise be. To walk a mile or two, or even three miles the day before or even the day of the birth is not at all beyond what can be expected from an ordinary healthy woman who lives as she should.

The necessity perpetually to be fussing, to be taking tonics or drugs or medicines, to be thinking only of herself and never of any general or greater theme, is also eliminated when the general health is improved, and any mental or bodily activity which the mother can indulge in without a sense of strain is advantageous to the child as well as to herself.

The highly nervous condition and overstrained ​state of so many modern women during this time is due entirely to the artificial social lives, involving late hours, which they try to lead. The mother-to-be should give up almost all social engagements which keep her out of bed after 9 o'clock. Sleep, fresh air, exercise under the healthiest natural conditions she can command, coupled with the right diet, will secure her health and strength throughout the time.

The difficulties, however, about which help is most needed are the first group, those nature-imposed and inevitable difficulties which the woman has to face, and which, without instruction in the things she might do to mitigate them, often lead her to suffer intensely, though needlessly, and tend to have life-long effects on her health and appearance. Simple and sometimes obvious precautions are required, and yet these are almost unknown to the generality of advisers to whom the prospective mother can turn.

The first and most obvious inmost change that affects her is that felt in the muscles below the waist, particularly those which run vertically, and which support, by their elasticity and strength, the whole front of the body. As the months pass and the child and its attendant tissues grow, there is a slowly increasing strain on these muscles. As the enlargement proceeds the skin will also stretch, and the under-skin and ​tissues beneath it are finally stretched almost to breaking-point, stretched sometimes so that they do break apart and leave ultimate permanent little scars under the skin of the mother. Few apparently know, but all should know, that this can be almost entirely avoided (by fortunate women entirely avoided), if the skin and tissues immediately below it are kept supple by daily rubbing with olive oil from the fifth month. Perhaps from the fourth month once a week, and certainly from the fifth month daily, the mother should rub the lower part of her body and her breasts with a little olive oil. This will not only have a soothing effect upon the skin, but will assist its elasticity in such a way that she may return to her virgin condition without leaving those tell-tale scars which so often mark a woman, and which many, even highly trained maternity nurses and doctors, seem to think are inevitable. Such scars are not inevitable, and this very simple precaution, coupled with exercise, will frequently be sufficient safeguard for the woman who desires to avoid them altogether.

The same internal growth which enlarges the muscles and strains the skin will also sometimes press apart the two main vertical muscles in such a way that there is a tendency for inner tissues to project, and for the last month or two this may be very uncomfortable without ​in any way being dangerous. It is then advisable to wear a small stiff pad over this and fasten it in place with a narrow, soft elastic band. The use of a localized plaster very often strains the skin and leaves scars or makes it sore. It is wise to have the small hard central bandage wherever there is a tendency to localized projection as will be self-evident to anyone who experiences it.

The natural darkening of the colour of the skin when it is strained and stretched as it must be is very displeasing to the eye and, particularly to a young girl whose beautiful body has been her delight, may be a cause of great distress and self-repugnance. It is well that she should be helped over this most anxious time of self-detestation by the reliable assurance that it is only a temporary phase, and that if she keeps in good health, and rubs herself with pure oil for two or three months after birth as well as before, the skin will be entirely freed from any stained or discoloured appearance, and will return to its normal condition.

As the months pass, the actual physical weight of the body will increase, gradually becoming a greater burden, so that long distance walking and any acute activity such as running or tennis-playing must become impossible. Nevertheless if the diet and mode of living suggested above is followed out this will be ​very much less embarrassing than is usually experienced.

Many forms of support or maternity corsets are advertised or medically recommended to assist supporting the weight at such times, but, unless the woman has any actual slipping of the position of the organs or any deformity, she is very much better not to take such proffered assistance for they will form a broken reed, and, as one knows, "the broken reed pierces the hand." It is much better for her to strengthen her own muscles by slow and careful exercise, bending forward until she touches the ground or as nearly touches the ground as possible; also lying on her back on the ground and rising without touching the floor with her hands and arms; also slowly raising the feet forward above the head while lying on the back, and then allowing them to drop slowly to the ground, this last exercise being very strengthening to the central muscles of the body wall (detailed accounts of other useful exercises will be found in Dr. Alice Stockham's Tokology). So long as there is no strain upon her, she should exercise throughout the whole of the time. She would then not need any artificial support, and would be much better without it.

I have never seen it elsewhere clearly stated, but I have discovered that one very important reason against corsets is that, however well ​shaped and loose they may be, they tend to touch and exert some slight pressure on the soft tissues at the back of the waist; they must do so, merely to remain upon the body without dropping off, and this amount of pressure is sufficient to induce morning sickness (see p. 88) for the following among other reasons. As the womb grows in the centre of the body it pushes aside and to the back the many yards of soft tubular alimentary canal which normally lie coiled in the front of the body, and, if there is no constriction or pressure, these tend to find room for themselves round the waist line and to the back, so that there appears what seems almost like a coil or roll of fat round the waist. This disposition is very advantageous, however, and should not be interfered with in the way any corset must interfere, and it greatly reduces the ungainly frontal size and helps to keep the body better balanced (see p. 101).

At first the breasts will become firmer and larger and will support themselves more readily than at any time, but later on their shape somewhat changes and they tend to fall. They should then have carefully slung and properly arranged supports looped over the shoulder. Neglect of this often results in the final and lifelong loss of the beauty of the bosom, and it is indeed a cruel thing that the average doctor ​or nurse appears not to be capable of giving any useful advice on this point, so that hundreds of thousands of women have not only lost their beauty, but have been told that it is an inevitable and natural result of having borne a child. That it is well-nigh inevitable under modern unaided conditions, may be true. With proper support, proper massage and treatment afterwards, the ugly breasts need not have been, and need not be.

A thing which often distresses girls, but which however unsightly it is while present is a temporary and passing phenomenon, is the sudden appearance of freckles, even large patches of brown colouring matter, on the skin during the time the baby is forming. So far as I am aware nothing can be done to prevent it, and if as sometimes happens these brown patches even appear on the face, it is a misfortune which must be endured as stoically as possible, encouraged with the knowledge that it will entirely pass.

Another curious thing I know one woman experienced, and about which I am awaiting further evidence, was the apparent transplantation by the child in the mother of the strong black body hairs of the father. The result was that during the later months of carrying and for a few months after birth, the mother's lower limbs and forearms had a thick growth of ​masculine-like hair, which nearly all fell off within six months after the birth.

The tendency that the coming child has to extract nutriment from the mother's tissues often results in the loss or temporary spoiling of two of her beauties, the beauty of her nails and the beauty of her hair. These are apt to suffer unless she is warned in time and protects them. The injury to them probably depends on the withdrawal of the proper quantity of fat from the tissues. It is, therefore, advisable for the mother-to-be to rub her nails and hair with some suitable natural oil. Refined paraffin, almond oil or castor oil for the hair are by far the best, and for the nails some animal grease such as lanoline, or perhaps simple vaseline. Expensive concoctions, very much advertised and claiming wonderful properties, generally owe anything which they may contain to these ingredients, but more frequently contain little or nothing of any value, and are often harmful.

The more fundamental, and, alas, almost inevitable result of bearing a child is that it extracts not only the fat from the system, but the hardening matter from the teeth. This indeed is, so far as I am aware, a theft from the mother by the next generation which no knowledge of its liability can prevent, and which can only be met by a careful supervision of the mother's teeth both before and after ​birth. Women differ in the amount they lose, but it is, alas, one of the almost inevitable things that there shall be a certain weakening of the teeth. Sometimes this will right itself and teeth which shook in their sockets immediately after the birth may apparently harden again and refix themselves firmly, but if the weakening takes the form of actual decay, they must be attended to.

In this respect the diet recommended by Dr. Stockham in Tokology, which advocates the elimination of all calcareous food is perhaps inadvisable if strictly followed out, because the growing child insists on mineral matter, and it simply takes it from the mother's structure if it does not get it in other ways. I have, therefore, thought it advisable not entirely to eliminate the wheat and other bone making materials from the usual diet as Dr. Stockham recommends, but to maintain a certain proportion of wheat, especially whole wheat, in the food. Her advice to replace rich dishes by simple rice, stewed fruits, etc., is certainly wise, and still more important is it to follow her warm recommendation to eat large quantities of fresh fruit.

One of the perfectly natural, but to the young mother rather unexpected, results of the changes of the later months is the alteration which gradually comes in the position of the centre ​of gravity of her whole body. She is of course scarcely conscious of this, and yet it is a point of some importance, because it results in a certain liability to slip and to fall, particularly coming downstairs. The danger of such a fall is less to the child, which is safely surrounded by a buffer of fluid and by the mother's protective muscles, but more to the mother herself, who, in falling, may strain or injure herself. The growth which results in this change in the centre of gravity comes too rapidly for the system quite perfectly to adjust itself to it. It will be remembered how long it takes a baby to learn to balance itself upright upon its feet; the adult mother-to-be has had a whole lifetime knowing just how to balance, and every muscle has become adjusted to the centre of gravity in its accustomed place. The change in the distribution of weight changes the position of the centre of gravity to some extent, sufficiently at any rate to throw the co-ordination of many years somewhat out of gear, and it is, therefore, wise for the expectant mother to take particular care not to slip or stumble unexpectedly. The sudden and active movement of the child which may kick or turn with no warning may cause her quite to lose her balance, particularly if she is on a steep staircase. It is well, therefore, to make a special point of keeping guard against this possibility by always having a firm ​grip on the handrail when going up or down stairs during the later months of carrying child.

However well and full of a sense of power and creative vitality she may be, a woman should take long hours of rest: to bed at nine each evening and not up till eight o'clock in the morning and taking at least one hour lying down during the day. During the nine months of bearing the unborn child, she should remember she is providing it with vitality every second of the twenty-four hours of each day, and she should neither have forced upon her, nor should she desire to do, work which ever tires her, though she should live an active, full, healthy, happy existence and should be capable of nearly all her normal work and enjoyments. If she is wise she will work in direct contact with sun-lit earth. Gardening ensures the truest sense of physical well-being.