Infancy is one period where stomach and bowel diseases are very common. You can prevent these diseases at home. You don't need to go to a physician. These diseases are thus preventable if you take some precautions.

This problem can arise due to many reasons. The reasons can be maternal or infant. However most of them can be prevented. So a mother should know about these problems in detail. She should know how to prevent these problems. As they say that prevention is better than cure so prevention is the most important thing. Each and every mother should understand that only she can prevent her child from these diseases. The problem will of course be treated by the physician but the prevention belongs completely to the mother.  All such disorders are described below.

When the mother is breast feeding the child:

The breast milk can affect the stomach and bowel badly. It may happen when the milk becomes unpleasant. The milk can become unwholesome if the mother is not well. This will surely affect all those in her vicinity especially her child. There are a number of causes, but undue lactation is the most common one. It will affect both the mother and the child.

A mother should keep herself away from all types of tensions. An anxiety can give rise to unhealthy milk. The milk will become deficient in amount and this may give rise to griping, flatulence and may even cause convulsions in the child. The child will have bowel complain. These complaints are temporary and are removed as soon as the milk becomes healthy.

Lactation can stop completely due to some great and sudden mental disturbance. The following story will tell you as to how much affect stress can have on lactation. Some Mrs. S aged 29 was a woman of fine health. She had a baby boy whom she breast fed properly till three months. After this, her milk suddenly disappeared. This confused the doctors completely. They were not able to find any physical alignment in her. The milk never came back and she had to keep a wet nurse. It was later known that her husband failed an adversity and this was made known to her at the same time when the milk disappeared. This thus explained the sudden loss of milk.

A mother must eat properly. Unwholesome diet will have an adverse affect on the mother's milk and thus on the infant. Let us take a case to explain this. A child with diarrhea was allowed to breast feed. It was seen that remedial measures didn't work as long as child was allowed to breast feed however symptoms resolved quickly when only an arrow-root made with water was allowed. It was however thought that it might have been due to some accidental cause and the child was thus again subjected to breast feed. But the diarrhea returned again in 24 hours. The mother was quite healthy and it was thus suspected that it might be due to some unwholesome article in her diet. It was later found that the cause was porter from a neighboring publican. It was not good and when left to stand, considerable sediment was found. So its use was discontinued and the infant was put on mother's milk again. He never suffered from diarrhea again!

In the same way, medicines taken by mother will also affect the child. However this does not hold true with all the purgative medicines. The same kinds of purgatives can produce different results in different children. A mother should thus be careful while taking a medicine. She should know as to which medicine can affect her child. She should take the medicine only when it becomes absolutely necessary otherwise the child's bowel may be affected.