Antenatal class breastfeeding session - your views please!

[lizzytee]

Just curious.....if you went to antenatal classes, and there was a breastfeeding session, did you think it helped or hindered you in learning to feed your baby?

[moondog]

Neither i suppose as there was never any question of me not breastfeeding.
It was however good to know that the community MWs and HVs were so fantastically knowledgeable and supportive however.

[NoBiggy]

There was a session, the mw demonstrated how to feed a Vtech teddy. I took it all on board, but in the event I didn't really do it her way, save for remembering "tummy to mummy, nose to nipple" when I first tried.

The most useful thing I got out of that, was to give bf 6 weeks to get right. Because when she said that I thought "6 weeks, I expected 6 minutes!", then she said what's 6 weeks out of your life. And put like that, I understood, and did have 6 weeks in mind.

[theUrbanDryad]

the most useful thing in our bf-ing AN class was the picture the MW drew, which was supposed to be of a baby latched on but which actually looked like a baby dinosaur! it helped me to know what to look for when ds was first latching.

apart from that it was a bit shite, tbh. but i know other people who didn't have time/resources to find out the stuff for themselves found it more useful!

[moondog]

OPh that reminds me of the most useful thing i was told when various nitwits went on about how babies shoud be fed four hourly.

The midwife said 'And how often do you a grown woman, go four hours without a single thing to eat and drink?'

Really made me think.

[sushistar]

Yeah, mine helped a bit with learning about attatchment and positioning.

[lizzytee]

How was the vtech teddy's latch then?

[PuppyMonkey]

When I went to antenatal classes with dd1 about 11 years ago, they were still advising us all to give "ten minutes one side ten minutes the other."

Plus I think everyone was so shit scared of the whole childbirth thing they weren't really taking in all the breastfeeding info.

[MrsMattie]

The NHS session I had was next to useless. Why don't they mention the problems you can have? Why was there no mention of BF-ing after a c-section, and some of the difficulties that can throw up? It was too rose-tinted, and when I did encounter problems I felt really unprepared and crappy about it.

[princessosyth]

We had a woman come and breastfeed her baby in the class. It actually put a few people off because it was a mixed class and the woman that came in felt more comfortable taking her top right off (it was a very young baby) and there were a few gobsmacked faces and a few people said afterwards that they hadn't realised that you had to get naked to do it!

Personally I don't think it made a difference to me either way as once ds was born I forgot everything from before. If I could have seen someone demonstrate it to me the day after he was born that would have been perfect but not very practical I guess.

[furrycat]

Ours was hilariously atrocious. We started off being given a pic of various women breastfeeding and went round the room with everyone having to say warm and lovely things about the pictures.

We were shown how a breast works - using knitted breasts that looked like Christmas puddings (had dh in hysterics as he wondered who actually made these things for a living).

Then we all (including our dps) had to "breastfeed" a doll to get the position right.

[No1ErmaBombeckfan]

No-one can tell you much until you have the bundle in your arms and you are at the business end of things....

I was just still in shock from all the birthing talk, I wasn't too worried about afters - if I had only known!!

The only person who was any good at giving me help was the BF councellor who came to our house and was able to help me when I was feeding DD

[IorekByrnison]

Our NHS one was useless. They told us what a good idea it was to breastfeed, invited us all to write any questions we had on a board, then ignored or brushed off any that concerned potential problems like low milk supply, thrush, mastitis etc. Then a couple of dolls were passed around the room and that was about it.

NCT class was better though.