Radiant Motherhood/Chapter 5

The sweet, soft freshness that blooms on baby's limbs—does anybody know where it was hidden so long? Yes, when the mother was a young girl it lay pervading her heart in tender and silent mystery of love—the sweet, soft freshness that has bloomed on baby's limbs.

Tagore: Gitanjali.

IN a happy and desired motherhood, every hour of the day and night may bring its intense delight, both in the dreams of contemplation, wherein the experience of love sinks deep into the heart, and of the linking up of the present with the future. All natural functions rightly performed give a deep satisfaction and content, but this, the greatest function of all, now so specialized and intimately interwoven with every highest racial impulse and every dearest personal desire of the loving pair, yields a wealth and profundity of experience surpassing all else.

​In my opinion, undoubtedly the ideal way of spending the earlier months of coming parenthood is in the form of an extended honeymoon, in which the couple travelling slowly should follow the guide of seasonal beauty or should visit place after place of historic interest or natural charm so that the mother's mind should be fed and stimulated by historic memories, by the exquisite freshness of nature, and the grandeur of man's artistic achievements. This, of course, would not be possible in its fullest extent to many, until, in the future, society recognizes the supreme importance to the race of the expectant mother. Some such course, however, might be possible to a larger number than it is at present were they to realize not only their personal good but the racial benefit of this procedure. In our country, owing to our artificial and unclean attitude, the mother-to-be, particularly during the later months, stays at home so far as possible, and does not go from place to place. When going about entails battling with crowds on public conveyances, this is wise. But the easy effort of walking or of riding in the old fashioned horse carriage from place to place on an extended journey, is ideal, and sometimes appears to have beneficial reactions on the character and quality of the child that is coming. But, even if such a mode of life is impossible, yet the ​mother by reading and conversation can, if she has a mind of trained imagination, vary and enrich the mental environment of her child while it is developing.

Then, too, the mother-to-be can count among her delights all the intimate personal enjoyment of the little physical things which contribute to the great anticipations of the future. She can, if she has the skill herself, sew the little clothes, stitching into them sunny thoughts and beautiful hopes, making them links between the present delightful solitude à deux and another beautiful time which the little one who is coming cannot comprehend till, many years hence, he or she will experience its charm in turn.

Little things intensely loved undoubtedly bring a greater reward in human happiness than great and numerous possessions, the joy of which can be but partly grasped. Within a tiny home, a mother whose heart vibrates with love can find a thousand sources wherewith to enrich the coming life.

But of all her delights, the greatest must always be the thought of the wonderful gift, which, at some ever nearing date, she will be able to give to the man whom she adores. Some men are negligent of the charms and enravishments of children, but I think in every man who fully loves and is fully loved by his wife, ​the thought of the child of them both must always be a stimulant to everything most ardently beautiful and profound in their natures.

Pictures of the child in after life filling brightly and beautifully some big position in the world may flit past the mother's mind during this time, but, if the mother is wise, she will not too intimately visualize the outward form of her child as a maturing girl or boy. By so doing she may indirectly wrong it. (Sec Chapter XIV).

Her delight should be to picture a tiny laughing messenger from God, thinly veiled so that its sex is hidden; the figure of a child a few years old, still full of divine innocence and radiant possibilities. Happy hours of bodily rest may be spent picturing it in a thousand beautiful actions dancing in the sunlight, a contagious centre of joy in the whole world around them. On such an idea of delight she may lavish every day invigorating thoughts and wonderful dreams; none will be wasted, of that she may be assured. If, at the same time, she is securing the coming child's bodily wellbeing through the proper material channels, then she can feel that these dreams of higher than material beauty are being built into reality. The secret sacred wonder of the process of which she is the active centre casts its spell of ​magic and delight around the willing mother. "A Garden enclosed is my Beloved," and she feels within her own existence the mystic sense of divine beauty, which one feels in another form in a walled garden in the summer twilight.