La Leche League of Ridgecrest: Innocenti Declaration

Monday, August 1, 2011

Happy World Breastfeeding Week!

World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated every year from 1-7 August in more than 120 countries to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies around the world. It commemorates the Innocenti Declaration made by WHO and UNICEF policy-makers in August 1990 to protect, promote and support breastfeeding.

If you would like to see the Innocenti Declaration in full, click link: http://www.unicef.org/programme/breastfeeding/innocenti.htm .

Tune your radio to 92.7 (KZIQ, The Coyote) tomorrow morning (Tuesday, 2 Aug) at 9:10 to hear Suchada and me interviewed about LLLRC services and World Breastfeeding Week Celebrations in the IWV.

hugs,
~jeanie.

What LLL of Ridgecrest Offers Mothers

● Mother-to-Mother support from experienced breastfeeding mothers and accredited La Leche League Leaders

● A place to get out with your baby

● Phone and E-mail support

● Monthly Series Meetings with the following rotating topics:

---> Advantages of Breastfeeding

---> Baby Arrives: The Family and the Breastfed Baby

---> Art of Breastfeeding and Overcoming Obstacles

---> Nutrition and Weaning

● LLL's own book: The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding (available for purchase or loan)

● Lending Library with books & videos on:

---> Pregnancy

---> Childbirth

---> Breastfeeding

---> Parenting

---> Nutrition

● Monthly meeting reminders through our Yahoo! Group

● A Facebook group

● This Blog

LA LECHE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL (LLLI)

LLLI is a nonprofit, nonsectarian organization—recognized as an authority on breastfeeding around the world—founded by seven amazing women in 1956 in Franklin Park, Illinois, USA. Through a network of accredited volunteer Leaders, LLLI currently has a presence in sixty-five countries around the world. Leaders have breastfed their own babies and been specially trained to help mothers with breastfeeding. They keep up-to-date through continued training and studies of the most current medical research on breastfeeding. Although some Leaders make home and hospital visits, support is primarily given through monthly meetings, telephone help, and online through email and the LLLI Web site at http://www.llli.org/ .

La Leche League gives information, support, encouragement, and education to all mothers who want to breastfeed their babies. While complementing the care of the physician and other health care professionals, it recognizes the unique importance of one mother helping another to perceive the needs of her child and to learn the best means of fulfilling those needs.

LLL believes that breastfeeding, with its many important physical and psychological advantages, is best for baby and mother and is the ideal way to initiate good parent-child relationships. The loving help and support of the father enables the mother to focus on mothering so that together the parents develop close relationships which strengthen the family and thus the whole fabric of society.

LLL further believes that mothering through breastfeeding deepens a mother's understanding and acceptance of the responsibilities and rewards of her special role in the family. As a woman grows in mothering she grows as a human being, and every other role she may fill in her lifetime is enriched by the insights and humanity she brings to it from her experiences as a mother.