iii: Of Weeds & Weans
Medicinal milk Joseph Nolan Breastfeeding is not always possible. A woman may have scar tissue from surgery, body modifications, or other trauma to her breasts; there may be structural anomalies which make the whole process impossible; she may lack adequate support and so, without guidance on how to improve a difficult situation, is forced to stop trying. Or, for reasons of her own, she may not wish to breastfeed. That is fine. Countless healthy babies have been bottle-fed by parents who loved them, and have grown up to be healthy, happy and well-adjusted adults with well looked-after children of their own. Still, breastfeeding does have some undeniable advantages. One of them is the ease with which it gets nourishment into babies and very young children. Little Sadie has decided that she will live solely on oatcakes? As long as Mama eats salad, so does Sadie. The same is true of herbal remedies. Little Zainab really doesn’t like Matricaria recutita (Chamomile) tea, but would benefit from its calming properties? Don’t worry Zainab— Mama will drink it for you. There are several conditions in tiny ones that are easy to treat with herbs. As with adults, digestive and skin problems respond wonderfully to herbal remedies. So, too, do the sudden and fleeting illnesses of childhood, which mainly require making the child comfortable, nudging appetite upwards and gently strengthening immunity. In breastfed babies and toddlers, these are easy to deal
with. All that is required, unless otherwise stated, is that the breastfeeding mother drinks a couple of cups of herbal tea a day. A teaspoon of dried herb per cup is enough. The immunological feedback loop between mothers and their nursing babies tends to sort things out very quickly, given the proper materials. Bottle-fed bairns I was a bottle-fed bairn, and I turned out all right— at least, I think so. Bottle-fed kids are a bit tougher to treat because they are used to their formula tasting a certain way, so altering that can be an unpleasant shock— especially if they are highly sensitive. (If they are, then check out these excellent books: The Highly Sensitive Child and The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron.) Giving them a herbal tea instead of some of their additional drinking water, or using the tea to make up the formula, are the easiest ways to administer herbs to bottle-fed babies. You do have to contend with the issue of flavour, though, so an alternative is to put the herbs in the bath with the bairn— more on this in due course. Colic, wind and digestive woes Colic and wind are very common problems with babies and infants. Almost every parent is familiar with the symptoms: evening crying, arching the back, pulling the legs up to the chest, distended bellies, and excessive audible flatulence. Dirty nappies may be infrequent— or overly frequent —occurrences. For these
