Since it's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission, I'm going to
post this and pretend I haven't seen KB's pleas for an end to this topic.
It still feels like it needs closure, especially since this is a group of
breastfeeding specialists.  If *we* don't have it right, how can the
general public?

My husband recently got to talking with a nurse who said she'd like to
become an LC.  LLL came up in the conversation, and the woman sort of
wrinkled her nose.  "Oh, " she said, "a friend of mine tried to get help
from them once.  They're a bunch of fanatics."  Or some such.

We had fun coming up with the ideal come-back later on.  Maybe "Oh,
hospitals.  A friend of mine went to one once.  The nurse was *terrible*.
I'd never go to a hospital."

LLL Leaders are as varied as nurses, IBCLCs, car salesmen, or any other
group.  But the organization *as a whole* is the most conservative in its
views of any organization I've ever seen.  That's why, over the 40-plus
years of its existence, mainstream thinking has gradually come into line
with its views, not the other way around.  It has only ten principle
thoughts.  In a nutshell, they are:
*breastfeeding helps get mother and baby in synch,
*establishing a nursing relationship is easiest when mom and baby are
together a lot right from the start,
*babies have a strong need for their mothers,
*breastmilk is the best food for babies,
*breastmilk is all the normal, healthy baby needs for about the first half year,
*nursing is a good thing as long as a child needs it,
*a natural birth makes breastfeeding easier,
*it's easier on mothers if they have the support of the father,
*good nutrition involves simple foods simply prepared
*children need to have their capabilities and feelings respected as they grow.

That's it.  All of it.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Except maybe repeated
reminders that Leaders accept every mother where she is, that they offer
not advice but information so that mothers can make their own decisions,
and that they couch their comments in terms that will not make any mother
feel that she's doing something "wrong".

Fanatic?  Hardly.  And notice how similar these 40-year-old guidelines are
to the "new" AAP guidelines!

I encourage **all** of you who have never been to a LLL meeting to attend
one and see for yourselves.  It's breastfeeding mothers helping
breastfeeding mothers, in action.  Far from being some sort of cult, it's a
surviving remnant of the way breastfeeding always used to work and will
again, if we all do our jobs right.

At the last meeting I went to, one of my recent clients who really worked
hard to overcome layers of problems that caused considerable pain, went
over to the only pregnant woman who happened to be there that time, and
said, basically, "It may be that things *don't* go well for you at the
start.  They didn't for me.  Finally, at 3 months, I can say that we're
really starting to enjoy this.  It's worth hanging in there, but it helps a
whole lot to know someone else who had a hard time.  Here's my number.
*Call me* for moral support, any time you want, in addition to calling
people to help you solve the problem.  It doesn't always go smoothly at
first, and that's okay.  You can still make it work."

That's mothers helping mothers, folks.  And that's what LLL and normal
breastfeeding are *really* all about.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL  Ithaca, NY, preparing stoically for her
30 lashes with a wet noodle for overstepping the lactnet bounds...