187. Temperance and Overwork
Today’s reading: “The Ministry of Healing” pp. 372b-374a.
Prenatal influences are so strong, the pregnant mother,
…By the command of God Himself she is placed under the most solemn obligation to exercise self-control.
Self-control in disposition. Not a “selfish, impatient and exacting” moodiness but a “temperate and self-denying…kind, gentle and unselfish” temperament. By the former attitudes during pregnancy she may give her child a birthright of “almost unconquerable tendencies to evil”, by the latter “precious traits of character.”
Alcohol and foetal alcohol syndrome are raised again. And alcohol is denounced in the strongest terms,
Every drop of strong drink taken by her to gratify appetite endangers the physical, mental, and moral health of her child, and is a direct sin against her Creator.
Maternal craving are not to be blindly followed.
But at this time above all others she should avoid, in diet and in every other line, whatever would lessen physical or mental strength.
Ellen asserts that the husband’s work and worries do not reduce his responsibility to tenderly cherish his wife’s precious strength by,
- taking on her heaviest physical tasks
- “leading on softly,” carefully comfort and support his wife.
So to sum up: the pregnant mother is to exercise self-control, the pregnant father, intelligent, active empathy.
