AIBU to think NCT classes are a waste of time & money?

[LittlePeaPod]

Am I been unreasonable to think NCT classes are a waste of time and money after only attending the first session and the only reason I should go back is to get to know the other new mums to be because they all seem like a really nice bunch of ladies.

Attended our first NCT session last night and I have to say I was really disappointed in the class. The two and a half hour session was boring and verging on condescending. The activities can only be compared to those crappy training activities you get in crappy work based training sessions. The MW is clearly pro natural birth with no intervention what's so ever including any form of pain relief and her method of trying to scare the new mums into following her path was crap IMHO. For example she proclaimed swaddling new borns has been linked to cot deaths! When I asked her to give us some facts so we could understand what exactly the risk associated to swaddling is, she couldn't. [Hmm] The breast feeding guilt trip started last night please don't got me wrong i understand the benefits of breast feeding a new born She clearly hasn't considered that there may be mums in the group that will struggle with breast feeding and they way she went on anyone that does struggle will feel like a failure and like they are letting their baby down this goes for anything other than a VB with no pain relief too

I am a logical person and it frustrated me that the MW didn't seem able to back her statements up with actual facts. She just blubbed scary shit and there was no opportunity for real discussion. Either she is not used to people asking questions or she was just trying to frighten us into following the path that she did when she had her children. So much for giving new mums to be the relevant unbiased information so we can prepare for the birth / post birth including what could go wrong and god forbid anything does go wrong we can at least be informed so we can make decisions quickly. If last nights session is a sign of things to come I think the MW is going to get a shock because I won't be able to sit there and just nod!

I understand at 29 weeks pregnant I can be a bit unreasonable sometimes. So please ladies AIBU?

It isn't me whose friend is the NCT person, LittlePeaPod, it's another poster.

To be perfectly truthful, even if I did know that NCT person she wouldn't be a friend of mine with that sort of approach to non-natural childbirth!

Yes, I didn't follow the advice to the letter, I didn't buy a new mattress for dc2 for example. But I do think midwives / nct teachers should give the correct advice, that's all I mean.

It was never the Natural Childbirth Trust, it used to be the National Childbirth Trust!

Sounds like you have a nutty facilitator OP which is a real shame. I had fantastic ones for both my original classes and my refresher classes. They both covered CS really well, in my first classes we watched a video of a CS which was really calm and showed a good experience, and were very much about giving unbiased information about pain relief and telling you to make an informed decision.

And I made fantastic friends both times around.

If you want preparation for breastfeeding then I suggest you go to your local la leche league meeting. Unlike the NCT the La Leche League is free so you have nothing to lose if you don't like the leaders.

My NCT teacher was lovely and my issue was with the rest of the class being horrendous snobs. My classes were very through on different types of pain relief and various birth interventions including c-section.

I feel that the NCT is too focussed on one day of your life. The reality of looking after a new baby for the next 18 years is a huge shock. In many ways I think that less educated families who go with the flow do much better than women who want to be in complete control and think they know more than the midwife.

Our NCT teacher also told us about how many people are present for a c section. In the same way that she told us about the lack of midwife presence for large parts of a vaginal birth (our local hospital being very understaffed). As a group we were not particularly interested in "natural" childbirth because we were mostly high risk and she really tailored it to our needs and spent a lot of time talking about pain relief options and the optimal times to use them.

The national childbirth did used to be called the "Natural Childbirth Trust". The charity was set up in 1955". It changed its name in 1961 to the "National Childbirth Trust".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childbirth_Trust

"Briance's advertisement announced "A Natural Childbirth Association is to be formed for the promotion and better understanding of the Dick-Read system. Anyone interested write Box...". The inaugural meeting was held on January 29, 1957 at Caxton Hall with Grantly Dick-Read as one of the speakers. The NCA became the Natural Childbirth Trust in 1958.[3]"

The NCT has an agenda and I feel the OP should have been told this before signing up for the classes.

We weren't happy with ours either, we only went to 2. The "facilitator", didn't seem very keen on providing actual advice, but more on scaremongering and pushing NCT propaganda. The crunch for us was when another attendee (a GP) questioned the facilitator's message on bf, suggesting that in certain circumstances ff or mf is a necessary for the well being of mum and baby, and she was promptly asked to leave.

Fortunately our area has excellent NHS antenatal classes which we have now been attending for 3 weeks. The group are very friendly, and the midwife is superb, offering both advice from her professional perspective, and the practical perspective of being a mum of 3. Wish we hadn't wasted our money on the NCT ones now.

I only made it to the first session if my Nct classes as DS came early. Still money well spent though as the friends I have made have been a great support and we do a lot together. It depends why you go and what you want out if it - I was lucky in that most if my group wanted to make friends and like to get out and about with their babies.

"my issue was with the rest of the class being horrendous snobs...

... In many ways I think that less educated families who go with the flow do much better than women who want to be in complete control"

Apologies for going slightly off the original topic- I'm very interested in this as our NCT classes start this week..

For those who have made great friends- how exactly did this work out? I realise this sounds a bit odd but I'm largely going for the "making local friends with babies" aspect and just feel a bit anxious about failing!

At my NHS class there were lots of lovely ladies who I'd have happily swapped numbers with but just didn't have the confidence to ask and noone else seemed to...

Do the NCT groups rely on someone instigating the number swapping/ meet up arranging?

I feel like its the first day of school and I should go with a "do you want to be my friend" sticker on my jumper..

I'm not usually this feeble- honest!

I did NHS ones as i already have friends with small children and even a couple of them with babies born within a month of mine.

The NHS ones were great to be fair and id heard the NCT ones were generally as you describe.

My NHS breastfeeding class on the other hand, was an insult to my intelligence.

The crunch for us was when another attendee (a GP) questioned the facilitator's message on bf, suggesting that in certain circumstances ff or mf is a necessary for the well being of mum and baby, and she was promptly asked to leave.

that's disgusting! How did the rest if the group react to that?

NCT classes aren't run by midwives. They are run by people who have taken a training course directly with the NCT (a year or two long i think).

The NCT has been great for me ....

I still go on holidays with friends I made moving to a new city with my partner and baby, and my DC are teenagers now

The friendship aspect is the most important side I think, though going into labour with some confidence and idea of your preferences in different situations is also invaluable.
I had two very natural births with my DC, dd being born in a water-pool and ds arriving very quickly on land LOL
I doubt if I'd have had such good experiences without the confidence I gained from the NCT classes.
My DC also took to breastfeeding like ducklings to water after some basic guidance from the NCT breastfeeding counsellor during the antenatal classes.
Also really important in helping DH and I together to prepare for both the birth and parenthood. I really valued going with him to the classes and feeling much more that we were going into things together (getting him on board with birth and parenthood if you like)
I also did the hospital classes in our area and found they gave more neutral information on different pain relief choices in labour - the NCT was originally called The Natural Childbirth Trust, but changed it's name to The National Childbirth Trust. It still very much retains it's emphasis on a natural approach wherever possible, so possibly doesn't suit everyone equally well.
Though rather expensive I think the classes have more value than you may appreciate at the time. In fact worth their weight in gold and cheaper than divorce Worth it for the friends you make - I had such a lovely summer lunching with friends with our new babies

mildred - i'm thinking similar thoughts! On the confirmation email about our group it mentioned that the course included the organisation of a meet-up 2/3 weeks after the last birth, and also asked if you personally were happy with your contact details being available to the other members. I've said yes to that.

The NCT attract the type of women who want to be in control of their lives and used to being sucessful. I have never met anyone outside the NCT who views natural birth without pain relief as being a gold standard. Competive childbirth is completely pointless as there are no prizes for being a martyr.

Often mothers who are more relaxed and go with the flow have better outcomes. In many ways accepting whatever comes and not beating yourself up about needing an instrumental birth or pain relief makes for a happier mother. I believe that anxiety about childbirth does make labour worse and sometimes too much knowledge is a bad thing.

It would be interesting to compare rates of post traumatic stress between different groups of women. Anedotely women I know who have made a huge effort to learn about natural birth and had detailed birth plans have suffered more than those who have left everything to chance when they had to ditch the idea of natural birth.

I was fortunate to have 3 great groups of friends/ new mothers all arranging meet-ups in the summer after dd was born. They were all equally lovely and supportive groups (although only one group, the hospital ante-natal class, did lunch together) Anyway one group was the NCT antenatal class, one the hospital ante-natal class, and one the post-natal group organised at local health centre by the health visitors.
The NCT did more to facilitate the groups having one organised meet-up after the babies were born. With the other groups someone just said let's exchange phone numbers and addresses and everyone else (nearly) said YES !
As you can see having dd was kind of my focus that summer
But I was very lucky to have such good company and support
So much more fun that way
Good luck to you all
BTW I was living in the Wimbledon and Wandsworth area at the time, which the local NCT newsletter informed me was the baby capital of England at the time (highest birth rate in the country?)
So that might have helped!

If you feel your trainer has an agenda then you should contact HO. You coukd ask for a refund or see if there are any other courses running in your area.

I don't believe the NCT has an organisational anti c-section or intervention policy. They are about education, and that's certainly what we got. Non judgemental and objective.

Our teacher also did thePlaymobil operating theatre to demo a c section thing. The purpose was the opposite of making us anxious - it was to illustrate just how many people are present at a normal, non emergency c-section, so that if you are in that situation you are less likely to worry.

Can't agree with you that "sometimes too much knowledge is a bad thing"
ReallyTired, especially regarding women and childbirth.
I think one of the founding and on-going principles of the NCT was to empower women by giving them information about their bodies and the birth process. I think this remains much needed and an on-going issue for women today.

Personally I didn't feel the need or the relevance of NCT classes to me, and I don't think I missed out on anything by not attending one (though i did look into it when PG with DD1).

But many parents I know enjoyed them.

They aren't compulsory.

The best parenting 'lesson' I've ever had was the free BF workshop run by an Ghanaian lady called Aunty Vicky, for Queen Charlottes hospital. She was amazing, entertaining, informative, supportive and her voice and wisdom stayed with me though the early days of BF both babies.

Whether or not you consider it good value for money completely depends on what you want to get out of it. As a means of getting the information into your head it's appalling value for money - you could just as easily go to free NHS classes or read some books. But as a way of meeting other mums whose babies will be a similar age to yours, in your area, it's excellent - and you won't know until you have your baby whether or not this support network will be of value to you.

Are you sure that your teacher is a qualified, practising MW? Ours was a trainee MW and she was EXCELLENT. We received balanced information on interventions and without political agenda or hysteria but I don't think that this is typical - friends in other areas have had very partisan teachers. The NCT really needs to deal with this inconsistency of experience because it's really damaging to their reputation IMO.

There are a couple of other things which will make a big difference. I think it's important that there is a fairly narrow range of due dates, ideally no more than four weeks, otherwise your babies are just too different in the early period and you can end up either with a newborn weeks before everyone drops, or waddling around heavily pregnant while everyone else has had theirs. It's also important that you are all genuinely local to each other.

Finally, what does your partner think? Don't underestimate the value to him. With the best will in the world, my DH would never had read masses of baby books so the information we received was really important to him at the birth. It has also given him a network of dads, which I think we often forget about.

Just to add - if you already feel like this after class 1 then you need to feed back either to the teacher or to the regional admin.

My NCT class wasn't really worth it. Firstly it was due to start about 6 weeks before my due date, but the teacher was ill so it was postponed by a month. Which wasn't very convenient as several of us gave birth halfway through the course. That did bring home to me that it's just a voluntary thing not a professional service.

And in content, I had very similar information and advice from the free NHS classes in our area - including sessions on active birth, breastfeeding, relaxation. The NHS classes were less ideologically driven so it felt we were able to debate more rather than just accept the NCT mantra on breastfeeding etc.

I did make a couple of close friends at the NCT class but I also made good friends at the NHS midwife led sessions (especially the aqua-natal classes they ran).

I wouldn't bother again with the NCT, I'm sure it means well but IME the NHS does it better and for free.

I knew there was some association with the word 'natural' somewhere!

Personally, I think knowledge of childbirth is a good thing. I learn and recall things much better from reading up on them, I think this is why I didn't take much in from the instructed classes. Second time around I read up on hypno birthing, no classes, no instructions and that knowledge made my second child's birth bearable. I'm glad I didn't just turn up to the induction without a clue because it would've been a lot more painful!

Unfortunately the teachers can spout what they like cant they, some are going to be naturally more balanced and helpful whislt others are more miltant and will push their agenda.

At the end of the course there is an opportunity for feedback, so you can complain then or email them now.
At least the whole thing is more known about now and transparent, rather than poor expectant mums thinking their way is the only way...