Edwina Froehlich, 93, La Leche League Pioneer

Copied word-for-word from an obituary by Roni Caryn Rabin in The New York Times, today.

Edwina Froehlich, who was inspired to help found La Leche League to support breast-feeding after being told at the age of 35 that she was too old to make breast milk for her baby, died Sunday in Arlington Heights, Ill. She was 93 and lived in Inverness, Ill.

A pioneer on several fronts of motherhood, she worked for Young Christian Workers, a Roman Catholic lay organization, before marrying John Froehlich when she was in her early 30s. She had her first child a couple of years later, making her comparatively old to have a first child at the time, and she made the controversial decision to forgo giving birth in a hospital in favor of a more natural delivery in her Franklin Park, Ill., home, with an obstetrician attending.

At a time when most pediatricians encouraged formula and bottle-feeding and when there were few scientific studies demonstrating the health benefits of breast milk, Mrs. Froehlich chose to breast-feed all of her babies, said another La Leche founder, Mary White.

“We used to tell the mothers the three main obstacles to successful breast-feeding were doctors, hospitals and social pressure,” Mrs. White said.

In 1956, when Mrs. White and a friend, Marian Tompson, decided to start a community organization to support and educate local breast-feeding mothers, Mrs. Froehlich was one of the first women they approached. Soon, monthly meetings were being held in Mrs. Froehlich’s home, and a new phone line was installed so she could answer questions coming in from mothers across the country, Mrs. White said.

“We didn’t have any information,” said Mrs. Tompson, another of the original group of seven La Leche League founders. “There weren’t any books out there, and women just didn’t talk about these things. Only 18 percent of women in the U.S. left the hospital breast-feeding at that time.”

As La Leche League of Franklin Park grew, becoming La Leche League International in 1964, Mrs. Froehlich took on additional roles, including serving as assistant executive director for many years and, more recently, as a board member and a member of the Founders’ Advisory Council.

She was one of the authors of “The Womanly Art of Breast-feeding,” the league’s manifesto, which was first put together in loose-leaf form in 1958 and later published as a bound book in 1963. More than two million copies are in print.

End of Ms. Rabin's excellent obituary.

Comments by Robert Young Valentine:

Shauna Burgon Valentine, Thursday, June 12, 2008.

My wife Shauna Burgon Valentine joined the La Leche League in 1969 in Durham, N.C. and attended meetings faithfully for three years until our first child (Christopher Burgon Valentine, MD) was born. Shauna breast-fed all five of the Valentine children for as long as each was interested. She taught many women the "womanly art of breast-feeding" over decades. Our daughters breast-feed our grandchildren. No doubt one of the major reasons our children have become effective and efficient adults is the feeling of security and maternal bond established between each child and their devoted mother Shauna during the precious times that she breast-fed them while gently stroking their foreheads, gazing into their eyes and singing softly to them.

Kudos to Edwina Froehlich and to Shauna Burgon Valentine.