A mother should remain in bed for at least two weeks after the birth of the child, and should not return to her household duties under a month; she should also take great pains to protect herself from cold, so as to escape the rheumatic affections to which at this time she is particularly subject. If these directions were generally observed, there would be less employment for physicians with diseases peculiar to women, and fewer invalids in our homes.
This is a matter of great anxiety with many women; and it is proper that it should be, for a flabby, pendulous abdomen is not only destructive to grace of movement and harmony of outline, but is a positive inconvenience.
To avoid it, be careful not to leave the bed too early. If the walls of the abdomen are much relaxed, the bed should be kept from two to three weeks. Gentle frictions daily with spirits and water will give tone to the muscles. But the most important point is to wear for several months a _well-fitting_ bandage--not a towel pinned around the person, but a body-case of strong linen, cut bias, setting snugly to the form, but not exerting unpleasant pressure. The pattern for this has already been given.
It has been well said by Madame Sirey, that women who comprehend well their rights and duties as mothers of families, certainly cannot complain of their destiny. If there exists any inequality in the means of pleasure accorded to the two sexes, it is in favor of the woman. The mother who lives in her children and her grandchildren has the peculiar privilege of not knowing the grief of becoming old.
'So low down in the scale of creation as we can go,' says Professor Laycock of Edinburgh, 'wherever there is a discoverable distinction of sex, we find that maternity is the first and most fundamental duty of the female. The male never in a single instance, in any organism, whether plant or animal, contributes nutrient material.'
Among the Romans, it was enacted that married women who had borne three children, or if freed-women, four, had special privileges of their own in cases of inheritance, and were exempted from tutelage. Juvenal has recorded the reverence paid in Rome to the newly-made mother, and the sign by which her house was designated and protected from rude intruders, namely, by the suspension of wreaths over the door.