Child's Dress : Pins, Remaining Wet

The Young Mother: Management of Children in Regard to Health
by William A. Alcott

(Page 10 of 26)

8. Pins

The custom of using ten or a dozen pins in the dressing of children, ought by all means to be set aside. They not only often wound the skin, but they have occasionally been known to penetrate the body and the joints of the limbs. So many of these dreadful accidents occur, and where no accident happens, so much pain is occasionally given by their sharp points to the little sufferer, who cannot tell what the matter is, that it is quite time the practice were abolished.

Do you ask what can be substituted? - The following mode is adopted by Dr. Dewees in his own family, as mentioned in his work on the "Physical and Medical Treatment of Children," at page 86.

"The belly-band and the petticoat have strings; and not a single pin is used in their adjustment. The little shirt, which is always made much larger than the infant's body, is folded on the back and bosom, and these folds kept in their places by properly adjusting the body of the petticoat: so far not a pin is used. The diaper requires one, but this should be of a large size, and made to serve the double purpose of holding the folds of this article, as well as keeping the belly-band in its proper place; the latter having a small tag of double linen depending from its lower margin, by which it is secured to the diaper, by the same pin.

"Should an extraordinary display of best 'bib and tucker' be required upon any special occasion, a third pin may be admitted to ensure the well-sitting of the 'frock' waist in front; - this last pin, however, is applied externally; so that the risk of its getting into the child's body is very small, even if it should become displaced."

The writer from whom the last two paragraphs are taken, says be has seen needles substituted for pins; and relates a long story of a child whose life was well nigh destroyed in this manner. It underwent months of ill health, and many moments of excruciating agony, before the cause of its trouble was suspected. Sometimes its distress was so great that nothing but large doses of laudanum, sufficient to stupify it, could afford the least relief. At last a tumor was discovered by the attending physician, near one of the bones on which we sit, and a needle was extracted two inches long. The needle had been put in its clothes, and, by slipping into the folds of the skin, had insinuated itself, unperceived, into the child's body. It is pleasing to add, that, although the little sufferer had now been ill seven or eight months, and had endured almost everything but death, - fever, diarrhoea, and the most excruciating pain, - it soon recovered.

This shocking circumstance is enough, one would think, to deter every mother or nurse, who becomes acquainted with it, from using needles in infants' clothes. Happy would it be, if, in banishing needles, they would contrive to banish pins also, and adopt either the plan of Dr. Dewees, or one still more rational.

9. Remaining Wet

On the subject of changing the wet clothing of a child, there is a strange and monstrous error abroad; which is, that by suffering them to remain wet and cold, we harden the constitution. The filthiness of this practice is enough to condemn it, were there nothing else to be said against it.

It is insisted on by many, I know, that as water which is salt, when it is applied to the skin, and suffered to remain long, while it secures the point of hardening the child, prevents all possibility of its taking cold, it hence follows, that wet diapers are not injurious. But this is a mistake. Every time an infant is allowed to remain wet, we not only endanger its taking cold, but expose it to excoriations of the skin, if not to serious and dangerous inflammation. In short, if frequent changes are not made, whatever some mothers and nurses may think, they may rest assured, that the health of the child must sooner or later suffer as the consequence.

Nor is it enough to hang up a diaper by the fire, and, as soon as it is dry, apply it again. It should be clean, as well as dry. Let us not be told, that it is troublesome to wash so often. Everything is in a certain sense troublesome. Everything in this world, which is worth having, is the result of toil. Nothing but absolute poverty affords the shadow of an excuse for neglecting anything which will promote the health, or even the comfort of the tender infant.

Of the impropriety and danger of suffering wet clothes to dry upon us, I shall speak elsewhere; as well as of the evil of suffering children to remain dirty, - their skins or their clothing.