The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-28
Keeping Healthy Bottle-Fe ed
 Babies
By, DIR. CHARLOTTE c. WEST

U,
 II is more difficult to keep bottle
 fed baby well in warm weather than
 in cold, as so many factors enter into the matter, any one of which when overlooked is apt to cause seri- ous trouble. The greatest care may be ; exercised in the preparation of the feedings, yet I have seen a child given a half empty bottle which he had thrown aside half hour before. Un- der no circumstances should the milk that is left in the bottle after the orig inal fielding be used again.
 This is especially a dangerous prac- tice in warm weather: as no article of diet is so quickly altered in compost tion, sours and attracts germs as does milk. If the baby discards a feeding, wait until his next feeding time. It will do him no harm, especially if he is given sip of cool boiled water, or little fruit juice.
 Never try to appease the child with an old feeding; with an empty bottle to which old milk is clinging, and es- pecially not with nipple. Nothing is so fraught with greater peril to your baby than nipple sucking. First, be- cause the nipple is usually-in fact al- ways-soiled and covered with germs {; second, and highly significant, be- cause the child cannot fail to draw air into his stomach in the act of nursing" an empty nipple, conse- qHently he becomes troubled with flat ulence, gas, collie, indigestion, and the train of symptoms which make him wretched and his little life bur den.
 Remember that you are doing your baby untold harm by appeasing him in these ways. It is careless and shiftless. To save yourself few steps, a little extra work, you inflict the danger of infection and in all proba- bility an attack of collie or indigestion upon your baby.
 Be most careful to guard against air being drawn into the child's stomach in the above ways, and also in the regular act of nursing from a bottle. The best bottle sis short-necked with no projections; as the child nurses" the neck is always filled with milk, there are no mir spaces, Do not allow the child to nurse too quickly.
 The conical-shaped nipple which fits directly over the neck of the bottle is best Ga smaller nipple should be se- lected for aA-small infant), Buy HApplcS B1tH uO nO1eS ana make IneSe yourself (with a sterilized needle) just large enough to permit the milk to dr0p--not run--when the bottle is in- 1verted. If the child. has to tug and pull hard on the nipple there is also danger of drawing in air!@ Guard against this.
 These are all little things, apparent ly, but a mother will often say, "the milk does not agree with my baby" when, on investigation, it is one or combination of these little things causing the trouble. You cannot be too careful in clean ing the nipple. Boil them when new, Turn them inside out after each feed ing, wash with soap and water, rinse thoroughly and keep in q solution of borax Ga heaping teaspoonful to a glass of water) until needed. Some fill the nipple with borax and work this between the fingers under run ming water. It does away with the necessity of turning them inside out. When the nipples become loose and collapse, replace them with new,
 For delicate infants it is advised to boil the milk. This softens the curd, renders the milk more digestible and kills all harmful organisms, in house. holds using loose" milk it should always be boiled, as the prevalence of tuberculosis in cattle is well known, and many cases of intestinal consump- tion in children are indirectly traced to tainted milk.