Every year I think I will do this and then I forget to do it on the actual day. Well I’m not forgetting this year! I’m not letting October 17 pass us again by without me mentioning that it’s La Leche League’s birthday today!

What is La Leche League International (LLLI)? It’s a nonprofit breastfeeding support organization founded by 7 Chicago area housewives and breastfeeding mothers. This was a much needed thing in the 1950s when bottlefeeding of artificial baby milk was considered an “advancement” over mother’s milk coming from the breast. The word “breastfeeding” was even taboo, with the word nursing used a lot more. It’s because of these 7 women that breastfeeding has become a lot more normalized, as it should be, in our culture. LLLI was founded on October 17, 1956. That’s when the first LLL meeting was held, at one of the founding women’s homes, in Franklin Park, Illinois.

I will be forever grateful for LLLI. I was a La Leche League Leader for about 15 years and thoroughly enjoyed my time with this organization. That means I helped facilitate monthly meetings where women could come get questions on breastfeeding questions answered. I also answered the phone calls of nursing moms seeking help. I also went to several LLLI Conferences in my early days of mothering. At those wonderful conferences, I heard from fabulous speakers like Dr. Sears and his wife Martha Sears, Dr. Harvey Karp, and Mary Sheedy-Kurcinka. Those amazing events, on top of the monthly meetings I attended, gave me a lot of validation for my mothering choices. I met a lot of kindred spirits through my LLL meetings, chief among them, my Veggie Gal girlfriends. I’ve had these girlfriends for over 25 years; they are my closest and dearest friends. We met through LLL and started a spin-off group outside of LLL where we would meet regularly outside of LLLI meetings to have a potluck lunch or dinner and relax. How fitting that today, on LLLI’s birthday, that I spent time with one of those girlfriends!

I love that in the early years of LLLI, the most elegant Princess Grace of Monaco spoke at a LLLI Conference, endorsing breastfeeding.

Here are 12 lessons I learned from my time in La Leche League:

1. Nursing is a beautiful, empowering thing. Despite what popular culture with ads from beer to cars might lead to believe, a women’s breasts are designed for nurturing a baby. It’s so amazing that these orbs of flesh can eject a magic liquid that makes a baby grow and thrive, without any other thing given to the baby.
2. It’s OK to nurse your baby in public. Women who nurse in public deserve to be supported for doing what’s best and biologically normal for their baby, not shamed. They shouldn’t have to hide or use a tent or tablecloth to cover themselves, unless they feel that helps the baby nurse better without distraction.
3. It’s good to respond to your baby’s needs and tune in to your gut instinct about your baby. It’s OK to keep your baby close to you day and night, even wearing your baby in a baby sling or pouch. It’s OK to nurse your baby more often than every three hours and to give your baby nonnutritive sucking on your breast instead of a plastic object.
4. It’s OK and normal to nurse lying down and have your baby sleep in your bed. Your baby will not grow up weird for having slept in your bed and will not still be sleeping in your bed when she’s 17.
5. A child’s development should be considered when determining what behavior is reasonable to expect and how to discipline your child.
6. Fathers play an important role in supporting the mother and baby relationship.
7. Fellow nursing women play an important role in supporting the mother and baby relationship.
8. Nutrition is important for everyone, baby, mom, dad, and the whole family. It affects quality of life.
9. We can listen to everyone’s story with respect.
10. The way childbirth happens, ideally naturally, can help breastfeeding get off to a better start
11. Nursing, and mothering in general, can be made more fun and enjoyable with the right knowledge.
12. Mothering is important and beautiful, and deserves to be respected.
13. A woman is like a tree with seasons of life, and a baby is the fruit of her womb. Her baby will only be a baby once. It’s a privilege, joy, and source of womanly empowerment to be the mother of a baby and nurture this baby to adulthood. There’s nothing else like it! Embracing the seasons of a woman’s life is the a source of true woman’s liberation!

My involvement with exploring all aspects of breastfeeding led me into discovering so many other things. Going down the path of discovery of these things has led me become who I am today. These things are: whole foods nutrition, holistic health, alternate modalities of healing, ways to make childbirth less painful and more empowering, midwifery, water birth, home birth, gentle discipline, not letting a baby cry it out, cloth diapering, whole family roles, respectful communication and empathetic listening, lactational amenorrhea, natural family planning, natural cycles of a woman’s body, joy in mothering, joy in breastfeeding, joy in homemaking, cooking from scratch, homeschooling, gardening, homesteading, DIY life, homeopathy, home funerals, children’s picture books, reading aloud, family traditions, and so much more!

LLLI definitely helped contribute to who I am today, so it is with fond memories I wish LLLI a “Happy Birthday of 68 Years!” I treasure all the memories I have of my LLL friends, all the wonderful books I discovered from the La Leche League list of approved books, and all the fun meetings I attended. I even got to meet the 7 founders at an LLLI Conference, where all 7 women graciously stayed for several hours to autograph copies of the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding till the last woman standing in line had her book signed. See above and below. It was interesting that Mary White, one of the founders, wouldn’t sign the 5th edition because it had omitted statements about natural family planning that the 6th edition included.

I feel so happy seeing my daughter and daughter-in-law repeat the legacy of nursing, by nursing my grandchildren. A bonus blessing I got this past year is hearing my 20 year old son tell me, as he waved his hand at my bookshelf full of homemaking/mothering/nursing/whole foods cookbooks during family dinner, that he wants to give those books to his future wife after I die. That makes my heart so happy! I’ll probably give them to her before I die, when they will be more needed. The ripple effect of La Leche League lives on!

A wonderful example of a La Leche League meeting is below, with one of the founders, Marian Tompson, sharing her wisdom.