Memory’s Dissimilar Pictures of Birth-Chamber Scenes.—Newborn Souls Welcomed to Mother’s Arms and Love.—The Rebellious Mother with Empty Heart and Unwilling Arms.—The Older Children Reflect the Spirit of the Mother toward the Newcomer.—Illustrations of Conduct of Intelligent Children toward Mother at Birth Period.—How to Calculate Date of Confinement.—Birth Chamber no Terror for Those who Live Hygienically.—An?sthetics.—Their Use Explained.—Allaying Anxiety.—Earliest Premonitions.—Preparation.—The Three Stages of Labor.—Tying the Cord.—The Rest and Joy that Complete and Crown Labor.

Some of the darkest, and some of the brightest pictures of life, hung on the walls of memory, have been painted for me in the birth chamber. Bright when the little newborn soul is welcomed to a mother’s arms and love; love that is months long and deep. Dark when there has been a bitter rebellion that she must be a mother at all, and the little one comes into an empty heart and unwilling arms.
 
Another class of pictures comes to me; of the children trained by these mothers. The one class, children who are angry and rebellious that more little ones must come into the home, prepared to greet them with a hateful welcome, and looking upon their parents with a jealous distrust, thinking they must be in some way responsible for this unhappy state of affairs. Is it not true that such children are but the echo of their parents’ hearts? The other class of children, looking with love for the advent of the new brother or sister, cherishing it more and more every day, and giving their parents loving confidence.

Two of the bright pictures come to my mind. A little daughter who had been wisely taught where babies are first cradled, became in her seventh year a little woman in comfort and care-taking consideration of the dear mamma. “What can I do to help you, mamma, dear? and if you should be taken sick all alone here, you would call me and let me help you, wouldn’t you, mamma?” were questions often heard, and they sank freighted with comforting love, into the mother’s heart. This same daughter is now budding into womanhood and prepared to meet all its responsibilities and temptations,[181] and yet withal, modest and winning in her girlish, wise womanliness.

Another picture. I was called one night to attend a lady in her fifth confinement. The husband had come for me and leaving me at the door of his home had gone for the nurse. On entering, I found the only attendant of the mother, her twelve year old son. With her hands in his, and his face full of sympathy and anxiety for her suffering, he was giving her all the assistance that he could. Quiet and dignified he left the room as I entered, but not before I had read in his face the lesson that had sunk into his very soul; that mothers suffered for their children, and for this should have all the love and tender consideration they could give them. He was not an attractive boy, nor a tractable one, but the dear mother had taken the very safest means to hold him to herself, and a mother-anchored boy or girl will not go far wrong.

So much for some retrospects of the birth chamber, and now to the plain practical knowledge needed for those who are to experience its realities.

In reckoning the period of gestation the rule most easily followed is this. Add seven days to the date of the last menstruation, and[182] count ahead nine months, or backward three months, and you have the probable time of confinement. Should you pass this time you would probably go on for two weeks, as the most susceptible times for conception to take place are in the week following menstruation or a couple of days preceding the next period; which makes a difference of two weeks in the calculation.

If the bowels have been kept open by proper diet and care, and if the patient has kept up her daily exercise and baths, she will come to the birth chamber well prepared and it need have no terrors for her.

To-day when an?sthetics are given as a rule, not an exception, the chief bugbear of the parturient is lost or charmed away. It does not need that the an?sthetic be given to a surgical degree, but simply sufficient to take away the severity of the pain. I have found for the lying-in room the most satisfactory an?sthetic to be the one, two, three, mixture; by which I mean a mixture of alcohol, chloroform, and ether, in the proportion of one part of alcohol, two parts of chloroform, and three parts of ether. These parts may be varied however as the attending physician desires. It is not a quick an?sthetic, but serves every purpose needed, unless[183] full an?sthesia is sought. The patient can manage this herself, and it thus serves two purposes, giving her something beside her discomfort to think of, and taking away the pain so that there is little left to think about.

Take a light drinking glass, fill half full of absorbent cotton, and drop a few drops of the mixture upon it; at the beginning of a pain, or a little before, take a half dozen full breaths, and the pain is toned down to a very bearable thing. The patient can hold the glass, and there is no danger of her taking too much, as her hand will dro&#............