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Cleanliness is essential to your baby’s health. At first the infant should be washed daily with warm water; and a bath every night, for the purpose of thoroughly cleaning the body, is highly necessary. In order, however, the water in the morning should be made tepid, while baby bathing in the evening should use water warm enough to give a comfort feeling.
If washed with cold water, however, it should be less than a minute; for at this period, especially, the impression of cold continued for any considerable time depresses the vital energies, and starts to make the body temperature drop, and upon which its usefulness depends. With some children, indeed, the effects sometime takes longer, therefore, we must be really careful.
The surface of the skin should always be carefully and thoroughly wipped dry with flannel, indeed, the skin also takes advantages from massaging action of the mother. A child of a vigorous constitution and robust health, as he rises from his bed refreshed and active by his night’s repose, should be put into the shower-bath, or, if this excites and alarms him too much, must be sponged from head to foot with salt water. When the weather be very cold, the water may be made a bit tepid, but if his constitution will bear it, the water should be cold throughout the year. We must also make bathing time a fun and enjoyable experience for children. If a child is of a sensitive constitution, the cold bath during the summer is one of the best tonics that can be employed; and if living on the coast, sea-bathing will be found of singular benefit. The opinion that warm baths generally relax and weaken is misleading; for in this case, as in all cases when properly employed, they would give tone and vigour to the whole system; in fact, the tepid bath is to this child what the cold bath is to the more robust.
As a conclusion: if the bath for some reason cannot be provided, then cold saltwater sponging must be used daily, and all the year round, so long as the proper reaction or glow follows its use; but when the it happens to be the other way around, and this will generally occur, if the child is delicate and the weather cold, tepid vinegar and water, or tepid salt water, must be substituted.
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