I know plenty of people who have bad experiences with La Leche League and plenty of people who label them as a group of breastfeeding Nazis. I myself have not had good experiences with our local LLL group. I found them overly pushy (even for someone like me who clearly advocates breastfeeding) when I had to give my twins one bottle a day during their first few weeks of their lives. But I recognized that this was one group of women and not a single one of them had multiples. . .so I simply ignored them.
Many women feel like they are being made to feel guilty by the ‘breastfeeding Nazis‘, but I’ve said before that no one can make you feel guilty without your permission. Telling you that your child is missing out on a whole host of benefits if you formula feed is fact–not a guilt trip. And the reality is that some women lack the support that they need to breastfeed. But this is beside the point. As many people may not like La Leche League, we should still all be thanking them because they paved the way for me to breastfeed in public without harassment or fear of prosecution and they changed the conversation for feeding babies.
About 50 years ago, 7 housewives got together and decided to start a breastfeeding club. They had to be extreme in getting their message across but because of them we reap the benefits:
*Science now overwhelmingly supports the idea of babies being breastfed. At the time, conventional wisdom said that babies should be topped off with two ounces of formula to make sure ‘they were getting enough’, mothers were often told that they didn’t have enough milk or that they couldn’t sustain breastfeeding past a few months.
*Women, as I understand it, were not supposed to breastfeed in public. Apparently, breastfeeding in public at the very least during that time, caused a social stigma if the mother wasn’t asked to leave.
Essentially they changed the conversation about feeding babies and promoted the idea that we have breasts for the purpose of nourishing babies. Their most recent conference included a series of seminars on “When Breastfeeding Just Doesn’t Happen” offering support for those moms who tried and were unable to nurse.
Breastfeeding Nazis or not, thanks to them, breast milk is being promoted more and more as the way to feed babies.
Note: This week is World Breastfeeding Week. The focus is this year is on the first hour of life. The goal of World Breastfeeding Week is to promote and educate about breastfeeding. To do my part, I will feature one breastfeeding article per day this week. I am happy to answer questions and have started a thread in the forums for this purpose.