GETTING READY TO BE A MOTHER

"The young woman who is looking forward to motherhood is very often torn by sharply conflicting emotions. Her eagerness to have a baby and her happy anticipations may be dimmed by fears and misgivings, by superstitious and erroneous beliefs born of an ignorance that is little less than pathetic. A little information about physiological functions and an explanation of some of the facts of motherhood prove to be very reassuring to the mystified, uninformed young woman.

There is, too, the immeasurably important question of the expectant mother's personal hygiene-the general scheme of her living in such a way as to promote her own and her baby's welfare-concerning which the average young woman is almost wholly ignorant. But the busy doctor, who gives of himself, impartially, to a large number of patients, often finds it difficult to discuss with each one, in a leisurely, reassuring way, the facts that he would like to have her grasp, the misinformation he would like to dispel and the small but influential details of her daily life that he wishes her to consider. It is just such simple information and such details of personal hygiene that I have attempted to set forth in this little book, with the hope that it may help the expectant mother intelligently and confidently to do her part in making ready for the baby; and to spend the period of her expectancy in a happy frame of mind, free from haunting anxieties. And I have given some space to a description of the course of the baby's development in order that his mother might have an abiding sense of his reality and his need of her protecting care from the very moment of his origin.

In no sense does this book replace the doctor's care, for it is merely a composite of the advice about simple, everyday little things which the majority of obstetricians give to the average, normal woman. I have stressed the fact that the first need of both mother and baby, from the beginning of pregnancy, is supervision by a physician and that such advice as these pages offer is of value only as it forms a part of his personal care."