The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-03-18
Coddle Baby 1 You Like, Is
 Advised
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By CAROLINE CRAWFORD 5 C HOULD babies be cuddled and V mothered in the old-fashioned way? Or should mothers watch them cry with the modern belief that crying is good for their lungs and too much batting and betting injurious? A mechanical ma ternal arm" is among the invention presented to the new government bureau created to foster new ideas and aid i'm ventors, according to a cable from Paris. The arm is metal, joined affair, design ed to hold baby's bottle at the right angle. Its creator feels it meets a pressing need because of the shortage of nurses and because of the new theory about cuddling babies so much.
 But the New York Nursery and Child's hospital has few words to say about this new mechanical arm.
 Instead of cuddling and betting be- ing, harmful, mothering has a real therapeutic value" says Miss Warman, supervisor of nurses at the hospital. Every baby needs love just as much as it needs the sunshine and fresh air. Even ale 5tinest baby likes to be cud- dled and soon learns to smile and gurgle contentedly when . warm, motherly arm goes about it. 44s.
 "No sensible person wishes to spoil or .pamper a baby, but it is doubtful whether that extreme is as bad as the other-letting an infant fret too long without being moved, To he loved and crooned over is the inalienable right of every baby. They need the change and exercise of being lifted and cuddled,. es- pecially those little tots too young to move about freely in bed. It is a posi- tive physical necessity and even pre- ventative of certain kinds of disease"
 So much has been written about the danger of spelling a child by too much coGdling, that some nurses and par ents are apt to- adopt the scientific" attitude toward balfies. It shocks such scientific souls dreadfully when a fond grandmother insists on. picking up the infant. What fit does make the youngster crow vigorously; is it not in direct violation of rule ', paragraph I dren," which says that babies should be handled as little as possible?
 But science itself, as personified by the New York Nursery and Child's hospital, which annually cares for more than $500 infants, takes a stand ex- actIy opposite to that of the new Paris
 
 Good nurse should always take es- pecial care to see that this mothering is not iost," warns Miss Warman. For example, we have rule here at the hospital that nurses must always pick up the babies at feeding time. holding them in their arms while giving them their bottles. Labor-saving devices, such as automatic feeding apparatus for holding bottles, have been summed, be- cause they destroy that personal con- tact that is SO important. We even have one volunteer. who comes to the hospital regularly for the sole purpose of picking up the babies in the wards and mothering them a while."
 In addition to the rule that every nurse must pick up the child when giv- ing him his bottle, there is also another uHwritten rule at the nursery, and that is-the baby must smile before he is put down.
 Mothers who just can't help picking up their babies and hugging them may be- relieved to know that such action gives them no cause to feel just trifle guilty or "unmodern9- for it is, really quite scientific.