Se7en of the Best Things About the La Leche League

Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and I have been nursing for the last eleven years straight – good grief, thats a long time when you write it down and don’t think day to day! I thought I would blog about my favorite Breastfeeding Support in the World and that would be the La Leche League (LLL).

When I first fell pregnant the father person brought me the book:

028B1451-4D64-4A49-9F03-ED62368E6AF5.jpg

And my first thought, of all the books full of beautiful baby pictures and full color spreads, why in the world would he buy me a pictureless book… well I started reading and knew straight away that this was how we were going to parent… once I started I read it right through without stop. They kept mentioning the LLL and look for them in your local phone book if you need support. Well I didn’t think I needed support (oh the pride of a career person who is now at home with baby). Turns out the shock of having a sweet little person in our home didn’t go away. Finally when he was nine months old in a desperate moment I decided to look and see if the LLL were actually in our phone book – they were! and I never looked back.

Now if someone asks me what advice would I give a new mom: I always say contact your nearest LLL group, before you have your baby not just because they can help you with nursing but they can help you with all aspect of parenting these little people! And you can get used to being around the realities of babies and motherhood before it hits you like the proverbial sledgehammer. Before we had a baby I had never really interacted with babies – I worked – and I certainly had never seen anyone nurse – how in the world did I think I would do it! No idea… you spend nine months pregnant and at least the first time round thinking about labour and preparing for labour. Hello labour is a couple of hours but the baby has come to stay…

Anyway here are se7en reasons why I love the LLL:

  • I love that the support is free and available to anyone who asks for it. Yet they are not prescriptive, take the information that you need and find useful and leave the rest.
  • I love that they have a great website, with an excellent FAQ page. Not to mention a way to find the nearest leader in your city, almost anywhere in the world. They literally are a phone call away. If you have a question that you can’t answer through the FAQ’s then you can fill in a help form and a well-trained leader will get back to.
  • I love that their information is authoritative, and so it is trustworthy. It really is the latest and greatest from top medical researchers around the world.
  • I love that the leaders are mothers and they promote mother to mother support, which means very little mumbo jumbo. It is wonderful to know that the person who is helping you has also battled to nurse at two in the morning and has gone through the gammit of new baby nightmares.
  • I love that there are monthly meetings – thats not so close that you feel smothered and not so far apart that you feel lost.
  • I love that there are other mothers at the meetings who are going through the same experiences as I am, there is always someone there who is battling with sleep, teething, starting solids… whatever – it is a great place to gather collective mothering wisdom.
  • I love that their are heaps of brilliant parenting books endorsed by the LLL, so approved by other mothers like me, and I will review se7en of them next week.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *