Mothers are often advised to drink beer, wine, ale, cocoa, chocolate and malted drinks, to increase and improve their milk supply. This advice is pernicious in the extreme. "It is a question," says Dr. Wm. J. Robinson, "if a mother partaking of considerable quantities of alcoholic beverages may not transmit the taste for alcohol to her children." Certain it is, the alcohol finds its way into her milk and is imbibed by the baby along with the milk. Mothers should be careful what they take into their stomachs while they are pregnant and nursing, even if they are unwilling to live sensibly at other times. A woman who becomes a mother assumes certain vital responsibilities to her child, even though, in modern times, this responsibility is taken lightly.

Nicotine For Baby

Repeated tests have shown that nicotine is contained in the milk of smoking mothers. The amount present varies with the amount of smoking done by the woman. Since the tendency to chain smoking is great in women, most women who smoke know few limitations to their indulgence. For the sake of her baby, she should give up the filthy habit completely. Indeed, it should be discontinued as soon as she finds herself pregnant, for there is ample evidence that there is a much higher death rate among babies whose mothers smoke than among those whose mothers exercise more intelligence in their living. Woman's slavery to Lady Nicotine (one of the most powerful narcotics known ) is nothing to boast of. This kind of slavery is poor "emancipation" for the "free" woman.

Drugging Baby's Food

Many drugs taken by the mother are excreted in the milk. Alcohol, opium, atropin, iodid of potash, salicylate of soda, the bromids, aspirin, urotripin, and antipyrin are among the drugs which find their way into the mothers milk. Cathartics and laxatives taken by the mother are likely to produce colic and loose movements in the baby. Nicotine finds its way into the milk of mothers who smoke.

Mothers should be careful not to take drugs and poison their babies. We are told by medical men that these drugs never occur in the milk in sufficient quantities to do harm to the baby, but this must be viewed as merely a defense of their drugging practice. Anyway, they never recognize the harm from a drug unless the drug nearly kills.