Mother and baby need to be together early and often to establish a satisfying relationship and an adequate milk supply.
In the early years the baby has an intense need to be with his mother which is as basic as his need for food.

So basically if you go to work you are starving your baby, according to the above. I am a Leader, and I enjoy being a Leader, but I do think that LLL is missing out on a HUGE part of the breastfeeding mom population by excluding working mothers. I did evening meetings for a while and was so thankful to have a mom that came with pumping experience. I did pump for two of my babies who were in the NICU, but I never pumped to go back to work.

However. When I was thinking about staying home with my preemie first baby, LLL was the ONLY organization that supported a mother’s need to be with her child. There is no other organization, that I have found anyway, that supports and stands up for a baby’s need for her mother. Even the U.S. government thinks that 12 weeks is a substantial amount of time to be with your baby. Sorry, but that’s not even close, and you end up going back to work during a growth spurt.

On the other hand, I am now home with my third child, and we are scraping by. There is an old LLL book from the 1980′s called The Heart Has Its Own Reasons, which basically advocates staying home until you are broke. I’m sorry but I don’t ascribe to that philosophy. I have worked a few part time jobs since I have been a Leader, and have been “allowed” to continue leading. The other Leaders in the area freaked out when they thought that I was going to be working full time.

So… I think that LLL desperately needs to get with the times. But I also believe that babies need to be raised by their own mothers, or at the very least by someone who loves them just as much as mommy does. Group care is inappropriate for infants. And I think until the U.S. government and other entities catch on that mothers need ADEQUATE PAID MATERNITY LEAVE, LLL will be the only organization advocating for mothers to be at home, nursing their children.

The problem I had is very similar to what Annie experienced, in regards to working mothers/pumping. This was while I was pregnant and taking a childbirth class. The final session was devoted to a discussion with the representative from LLL. She touched on the topic of working mothers and said that she felt that mothers who worked away from home caused permanent emotional distress to their children. Shortly after this, there was a bathroom break. The woman’s mother was in attendance observing her class so when we reconvened she said “My mother brought it to my attention that I sounded very judgmental just now.” She shrugged “Sorry. That’s just how I feel about it. Don’t let that stop you from calling LLL-you might not even get me on the phone. Ok, moving on….” Over a year later, I still struggle to make sense of my reaction in that moment, especially now that I have been a working mother for almost 8 months. There was a small part of me that appreciated her candor, and her unwillingness to concede on a point she felt passionately about. I am not a proponent of the “All choices are valid” argument per se….but what exactly are LLL’s goals? I am a working mother. I will not delve into all of the reasons behind that choice here, for the sake of brevity, but I’ll say it was not an easy decision for me to come to, nor has it been one I’m happy with. But I was there in earnest. Wanting to learn. Wanting support and education so I could create that connection through breastfeeding and maintain it. So, I couldn’t help wondering if LLL wants to provide support only to the choir, and not all the shades in between? By choosing not to have any kind of discourse on the topic, this woman just made LLL seem like a sponsor in the “Mommy Wars” to me.

@Tara: I have to admit, I resent your implication that people perceive LLL in a particular way because of their fragile, post-partum emotional state, as this glosses over the very real socio-economic challenges that many mothers face and the valid need for LLL to calibrate their tone in order to reach out to those women. Again, that is if LLL’s goal is to get more women to breastfeed. This didn’t really have much of an effect on me (although when my son was first born I really could’ve used some support, but I got through it and kept breastfeeding), but I have a co-worker who did attempt to breastfeed and had a very bad experience with aggressive, ineffective lactation consultants at the hospital (NOT LLL, in that case). Not only did this woman have zero family support but she was surrounded by sabotage at every turn. I did my best to provide her information and did recommend contacting LLL and gave her their website. At that point, her confidence was already destroyed. And I wish I could say I believed whole heartedly that LLL could have changed that for her, but after my experience I honestly don’t know. I don’t think we need to walk on eggshells, but I think you can’t change minds with hammers either and if LLL truly wants to create discernible change there is no getting around the fact that tone is a factor.

Annie, thank you for providing the information about the special meeting. I’ll have to take a look to see if there is anything similar where I am. If nothing else that certainly raises my opinion of LLL, and will make me more likely to refer someone.

The LLL-endorsed tandem nursing book is FULL of veiled and not-so-veiled subliminal messages about tandem nursing (if you do you’re a superhero, as evidenced by the drawing of “supermom” on the front. If you don’t you’re a failure. If you really love your oldest child you’ll tandem, if you don’t, you’re rejecting your oldest in favor of the new baby – start saving for therapy now, ’cause she’s gonna need it!). The damn book had me in tears, more than once. I would quote chapter and verse but I literally threw it away before I finished it (the breaking point was when it suggested that I give my kid sticks of FROZEN LIVER when she asked to nurse in the middle of the night). I called my mom (who was a LLL Leader in the 1970s, and who agrees that the entire organization has gone off the rails) and she said, “Honey, pitch the book, it’s insane.”

In order to remain relevant in an increasingly pro-breastfeeding world, the LLL has had to become more and more militant over time. It’s a shame, because there are a lot of shades of gray in between “nurse exclusively for two years or you FAIL” and “formula feed exclusively” that work for a lot of families, but no one is talking about those options.

Maybe I’ll write a book – “Mainstream Breastfeeding for a Modern World” sounds like a good title. But LLL? Not for me. Not anymore. Even though I credit my local leader with saving my first child. And since the group simply referred me to the LLL’s books when I was struggling with tandem nursing? Well, they blew it, and they lost me.

These days, when I hear of someone who is planning to tandem nurse, I tell her, “It’s the hardest thing I have ever done, and there is virtually NO understanding or support out there for those who do it, so be prepared to go it alone and make it up as you go along.” Of course, these girls have all drank the LLL Koolaid, so they fire back the party lines – “Tandem nursing isn’t for everyone,” (translation – I’m a better mother than YOU are), and “I’m going to give my baby the best, and put her needs before my own,” (translation – excuse me while I martyr myself – which you would do, too, if you weren’t a crap mother).

Please look me up on facebook or email: joand42@yahoo.com

LLLove,
Joa n

Personally, I think the best thing that any person can do for a new mom (or new to breastfeeding mom) is to invite her to a meeting *before* she has the baby, so she can make friends, ask questions, and get information and support *before* she’s emotionally, physically and mentally wiped out.

~Tara

During the meeting my son started to fuss. I had just fed him not 30 minutes before the meeting started, so I knew he wasn’t hungry. He had been fussy his whole life so far, so I just walked around with him upright like I always had, which seemed to help. What I didn’t know at that time was that he had severe GERD and every time he ate he spit up stuff partway and then swallowed it back down, getting a double dose of acid each time. So, shortly after a feeding he was particularly fussy. They STOPPED the meeting to give me a lecture on how important feeding on demand was. I was so embarrassed. When I explained that he had just been fed they told me that I didn’t feed him enough and they wanted me to feed him right there at the meeting. I didn’t feel comfortable with that so I declined. Throughout the rest of the meeting the leader kept stopping to ask if I would please feed my son. I felt very judged but stayed until the end.

After the meeting I asked if anyone could help me with the various types of carriers and slings I had been given as gifts. Not a single person offered to help me with what I had, but three people tried to sell me carriers that they personally made and one woman insisted that I buy her collection of cloth diapers and associated stuff.

I love what LLL does and I realize that not all groups are like my local one. I do wish it had gone better because I really needed LLL at that time in my life. I still breastfed my children and I still encourage others to do so if they ask me. I even suggest they attend an LLL meeting if they feel up to it. But I’ll never go back myself.