culties and annoyances derived from the latter. Hence make your rules for nursing, and adhere to them with a pertinacity worthy only of a mother who loves her child.
Nurse your child at slated hours, and do not deviate by a minute: soon you will have the happiness to see that your child will awake only at those hours, as regularly as the hand of the dial points to them. The intervals will be periods of refreshing sleep to the child, and of needed rest to the mother.
During the day, for the two first months, if your child is vigorous, nurse it every two hours; during the third and fourth months, every three hours; after that, every four hours. Should you do otherwise, and should you nurse the child every time it cries, you will overload its stomach, without giving it a sufficient time to digest the food; an error that will tend to gradually derange the digestive functions, and induce all its fearful consequences of indi- gestion. Besides, the child will soon begin to know that it can nurse whenever it cries; and then it will cry very often, and give signs that it wants the breast every time. Should its cries sometimes be only the result of nervous- ness or uneasiness produced by indigestion, your nursing, instead of relieving, will only add fuel to the fire. Slow digestion will cause flatulence, fiatulence will cause colic; and when you think that the child cries and desperately throws itself about for food, it is only giving notice that it has cramp-colic in its belly. The fact that nursing often quiets the child is taken as an indication that it needed food. That is a mistake: a little more food may stupefy it, rendering it less conscious of its pains, but this is only temporarily so; in a little while, the child will cry and writhe worse than ever.
Children may cry even without any appreciable reason;
