Chapter I: Front Matter

GETTING READY
TO BE A MOTHER

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_From the painting by Gari Melchers._

THE CARESS
]

THE BEGINNING

“Where did I come from, where did you pick me up?” the baby asked its mother.

She answered, half crying, half laughing, and clasping the baby to her breast:

“You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling.

“You were in the dolls of my childhood’s games: and when with clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made and unmade you then.

“You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship I worshiped you.

“In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my mother you have lived.

“In the lap of the deathless spirit, who rules our home, you have been nursed for ages.

“When, in girlhood, my heart was opening its petals, you hovered as a fragrance about it.

“Your tender softness bloomed in my youthful limbs like a glow in the sky before sunrise.

“Heaven’s first darling, twin-born with the morning light, you have floated down the stream of the world’s life, and at last you have stranded on my heart.

“As I gaze on your face mystery overwhelms me; you who belong to all who have become mine.

“For fear of losing you I hold you tight to my breast. What magic has snared the world’s treasure in these slender arms of mine?”

From “The Crescent Moon” (child poems), by Rabindranath Tagore.

GETTING READY TO BE A MOTHER
_A Little Book of Information and Advice for the Young Woman Who is
Looking Forward to Motherhood_

BY

CAROLYN CONANT VAN BLARCOM, R.N.

AUTHOR OF “OBSTETRICAL NURSING,” “THE MIDWIFE IN ENGLAND”

_Formerly Assistant Superintendent and Instructor in Obstetrical Nursing
and the Care of Infants and Children at the Johns Hopkins Hospital
Training School for Nurses. Honorary Member of the Midwives’ Institute,
England._

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

J. CLIFTON EDGAR, M.D.

_Emeritus Professor of Obstetrics and Clinical Midwifery in the Cornell University Medical College; Consulting Obstetrician to Bellevue Hospital; Surgeon to the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary; Consulting Obstetrician to the New York Maternity, Jewish Maternity, and Greenwich General Hospitals._

AND

FREDERICK W. RICE, M.D.

_Associate Professor of Obstetrics, New York University and Bellevue
Hospital Medical College; Attending Obstetrician to Bellevue Hospital;
Assistant Surgeon to the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary; Assistant
Surgeon to St. Bartholomew’s Clinic and Hospital._

_WITH SEVENTY ILLUSTRATIONS_

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922

_All Rights Reserved_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1922.

TO
THE BABY,

UPON WHOSE WELLBEING
DEPENDS THE FUTURE
OF THE RACE