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?

Horry, same thing happened to me. I got told you couldn't book till 28weeks and when i phoned at 28weeks i got told You should have booked earlier, we are already taking bookings from ladies due in November..'. I was due in August. I had to threaten an FOI request to get a place on a course!

I'm shocked at how many people on this thread are saying, 'such and such happened and it wasn't covered and I wasn't prepared for it which made me feel a failure or cross!'
I really don't understand that at all. Why don't women read and prepare themselves for birth? I was prepared for days of latent labour, lots of unmanageable pain, ventouse maybe needed, maybe failing then csection. Because I knew all that 'could' happen. Of course I wanted it to be as quick and as natural as possible but I knew that many births didn't end up that way and my birth plan simply stated, 'get both of us through it alive.'

As it turned out, I actually had a very quick straightforward vaginal birth. But I couldn't have known that beforehand so I wanted to go in with my eyes open.
I didn't want to be like lots of my friends; educated women in charge of their careers who think they can approach childbirth the same way. I have lots of friends who ended up bitter and disappointed mainly at the lack if control they felt they had both over their own bodies and how the birth progressed. Taking a much more Machiavellian approach certainly helped me.

I kind of get where you're coming from Worried as I wanted to look at every possibilty too - so my birth plan started with natural preferences but also covered everything else up to CS. I was fortunate to be able to have a very natural water-birth with DC1 (dd) but I wanted my birth plan to be really comprehensive so i didn't have to "throw it out" at any point, nor feel i was putting myself entirely in someone else's hands to just "get both of us through it alive" - though I guess at the end of the day that is the bottom line. But to my thinking whatever happens to you during birth there's always a place for your own preferences - even if that's "in X situation I would like to follow consultants advice/ lean on my medical team to get me through"

I booked the NCT classes for 2 reasons. First one was to make friends (seems to be one of the primary reasons that anyone books NCT classes) and second so my DH had an idea of what to expect during the birth. I didn't learn anything that I didn't already know in the classes, and was a bit at some of the things the facilitator said (such as you should challenge what the midwives say because they aren't always right, and that you can refuse interventions such as forceps/c sections). Our facilitator was very pro natural birth and pro breastfeeding. She didn't go into detail about the interventions much at all. And out of the 7 mums, 6 of us (including me) had either c sections or forceps deliveries. Lets just say that I didn't challenge the midwives or refuse a c section when I saw my DDs heartrate jumping about all over the place. I just signed the consent forms for the emergency c section..

I think they are good networking events: if you are thinking of having an extension done and want to make friends with an architect or two, it's the quickest route to making contacts and maybe getting a wee discount...

Worried I agree women should ensure they prepare themselves and I think it would be unfair to say the women on the thread haven't or didn't read up on their options and therefore they based their birth expectations purely on NCT. I have done a lot of research and paid for professional medical advice. I understand more than 50% of Vb end in some form of intervention, 1 in 4 births are CS births and I would never agree to ventouse or forceps because of the risks of instrumental injury, nerve (facial, eyes, arms, shoulder etc.) damage and potential haemorrhage in the baby's skull, along with a load of other research I have done. This is all irrelevant to me because I am having a CS. I think everyone is fully aware that you can never predict how any birth will turn out it would be very unwise and naive to do so. However from what I saw our facilitator will be pushing VB regardless and any information on intervention and/or CS will not be impartial. The scare mongering started at our first session.

The point of my thread with regards NCT is they advertise that they provide parents with accurate, impartial information so that parents can make informed choices. Their facilitators are trained so you would expect a certain level of professionalism when courses are delivered. But from what I have seen this is not the case and it seems other parents on this thread have had the same experience. When someone you believe to be a professional in their field advises you, then you expect that advice to be accurate. When they say they are impartial, then you expect non biased information. What I believe some people are saying is they expected one thing from NCT because that's what NCT advertise but instead they got something completely different

Oh I agree, juggling, I'm just amazed at how many women go into it thinking, 'this is what I want so this is what I'm expecting to happen.'
It's fine to have a preference but to go into it blindly then feel angry that nobody prepared you for the pain or the loss of control that many women feel seems madness to me. DH was prepped to expect screaming, swearing, blood, gore, poo etc followed by possible intervention including a crash csection. As was I! This meant that in the event, although it hurt like hell, I was prepared and not disappointed.

Well I just took them as one extra piece of info rather than their word being gospel. We definitely discussed csections in ours as one woman was having an elective due to a previous pelvic fracture and another because she was having twins. Our teacher covered in in detail for them but I know that one woman asked if shd needed to attend that wk as she was having a vb. Our teacher just laughed and said it would be useful just in case a vb didn't work out for her. So definitely no agenda from her.

She did stress, and I agree, and this ties in with what fabsmum was saying, is that busy hospitals are not geared up towards minimal intervention unless absolutely needed. A big example being that they often ask/expect women to lie on their backs on the bed. This is probably the least natural and most difficult position to give birth in. It slows labour down and makes pushing harder because the coccyx is tilting inward when luring on your back.

If I were you, if stick with it just for the social aspect. Undoubtedly some antenatal teachers are rubbish if have an agenda and you seem unlucky with yours but hopefully the friendships you make will be worth it,

Perhaps, especially as I'm picking up that other couples on course feel similarly to you about last week's opener, you could ask if you can go over (again ?) the areas and issues people would like to cover in the course. You could then stress that you know you'll be having a CS (is that right ?) so would obviously like to spend some time covering and discussing issues around that. Also personally I felt more confident going into BFing knowing all about bottle feeding too, as I'd worked on a mother and baby unit previously - so I rather doubt if showing people how to make up a bottle would really do any harm (I don't see why people wouldn't understand/ would forget those instructions when we're expecting them to remember lots of other info )
Anyway, always a good start to a course to ask participants what they're hoping/expecting to cover. HTH

We did cover what we were hoping to get from the session and she is aware about my CS. As a professional facilitator the delegates should not have to hold your hand or point you in the right direction once you understand what direction they are hoping to take. And if you dont then its your responsibilty to go over it till you do. She sets the agenda and is the professional and its her responsibilty to ensure she delivers a professional session. In addition it's the fact she was getting defensive and clearly not wanting to allow the group to discuss or ask questions in relation to what she was delivering. She was just talking at us rather than allowing any form of debate or discussion to occurs. And what she was saying was clearly biased.

As others and myself have stated there clearly are some good facilitator (you were happy with yours Worried) out their mine not been one of them but the NCT as an organisation should really be able to deliver a much more professional service than this. They have the history, experience and influence within this particular field. I don't consider spending half an hour asking grown adults to stick little stickers on female anatomy yonis to be of any use. I would rather watch paint dry or as my DH said he would rather pull his own teeth out.

I have come to accept that the best I will get from these sessions and for my £250 is meeting a few new mums to be. I wonder how many coffees I can get at a baby and toddler group for that.

Avoid them like the plague.

Iamnotmint Who? The baby and toddler groups or NCT?

TBH LittlePeaPod there have been so many threads taking issue with the NCT, and any response you get from those within the organisation is always the same. You will be wrong in some way, and there will be bemusement and frustration that people don't see where their money (lots of it as well) is going.

There are individuals who are good, sensitive, unbiased teachers. But if you want to talk about the rest: they aren't interested. Apparently they will have told you all about the potential complications, pain, upheaval etc but you didn't listen. And if you haven't given feedback after the terrible classes - when you have paid for them remember - then more fool you, you obviously forgot being given the form.

Hundreds and hundreds of women I've seen saying similar things on threads on here, I think Belinda Phipps came on at least once: there is never an admission that things actually could do with a bit of polishing.

I sent detailed and constructive feedback when I resigned several committee positions, and all I got back was a blurb about what good they do, completely ignoring what I'd said about the misuse of donated funds, alienation and abandonment of volunteers and specialist workers, etc.

A bit like a comprehensive complaint to Tesco about their anti-competitiveness and dubious employment policies ... and being told "Thanks for your email. We sell bread and milk in the middle of the night, you know."

That about sums up my impression of them, Horry

Just as the facilitator straight out "you've covered the natural childbirth without pain relief bit - when are we going to talk about pain relief and intervention?" You still have 5 weeks of the course to go - you didn't expect to fit everything into the first evening did you? It is mostly a session for helping the group to come together and feel comfortable sharing. It's not really appropriate to try and force a room of strangers to discuss very emotive issues - they tend to be scheduled for later in the course when people feel more relaxed and comfortable with sharing.

At my NCT classes we got to have go with a TENS machine, we had an epidural catheter to look at, we talk about CS and formula and all sorts of things. IME NCT classes are not passive sessions where the adults sit around waiting for the facilitator to drop nuggets of information on them, they work because they are much more discussion based and can be flexible according to the needs of each individual group of parents. And if one of those parents is planning to have a CS or has specific medical issues, then that should get as much time as the parents who are planning a home-birth.

Just ask - sorry for the typo.

Littlepea - how would you like the classes to be run?

I do a mix of small and whole group discussions, the odd quiz, some demonstrations, mini lectures, pair work. Would you find this format alienating?

I generally find that a key factor for how good a course is (other than my input obviously!), is how interesting and willing to engage the clients are. Sometimes I have two courses running parallel, and I'll roughly do the same activities with both groups (allowing for individual focus as suggested in the clients' agenda). One class might feel like wading through treacle and I have to really work incredibly hard to cover the material and bring out the salient points. Another group will take the material and run with it - they'll offer up interesting perpectives, challenge me, challenge each other. Some people come with a wealth of knowledge which they are happy to share. On the best courses there's loads of information sharing between clients, which is fantastic. And you can see that they're really enjoying themselves and learning a lot. A course with too much teacher input does tend to be draggy - even with a great facilitator.

I'm always nervous on the first night of a course for this reason - will a get a fun group or people that sit there looking like they're sucking on a lemon all evening? I'd say my ratio of fun groups to lemon suckers is about 20:1 luckily. ;-)

I agree Horry. My experience of NCT has also been very negative. The lady running my course was the opposite of the one described by the OP but equally useless IYSWIM. She knew nothing about anything and wasn't able to provide any useful info or opinion other than hand us lots of print outs.
As a charity I really don't know what it is they do to support parents and deserve charitable status. I work in a charity and never have I been able to refer a client to them or find them useful in any way.
Having said all that, OP you need to work on your strikethrough

Forgot to say that the course I signed up for was also outrageously expensive

I'm always nervous on the first night of a course for this reason - will a get a fun group or people that sit there looking like they're sucking on a lemon all evening? I'd say my ratio of fun groups to lemon suckers is about 20:1 luckily. ;-)

Completely agree with this. Have never been able to work out what makes these few groups go the lemon sucking route but I think it can be catching from couple to couple.

DontMention There are individuals who are good, sensitive, unbiased teachers. But if you want to talk about the rest: they aren't interested.. Yes I have picked up on this..

# HorryIsUpduffed for the Tesco note!

Fabsmum. Is how interesting and willing to engage the clients are that's what we were trying to do through discussion and debate but the facilitator had no interest and got defensive. I would like to be able to discuss the subject and also I would like less of the childish activities with sticky posters etc.

will a get a fun group or people that sit there looking like they're sucking on a lemon all evening? I'd say my ratio of fun groups to lemon suckers is about 20:1 luckily..

Have you ever considered that maybe the reason they look like the are sucking lemons is because they are bored or find the activities tedious? I am sure as an experienced facilitator you will be fully aware of the Kolb learning, development and training cycle and you will be fully aware that using the same facilitation technique for everyone will fail for some people because they find that particular style either boring or not stimulating enough. It's the facilitators responsibility to ensure they get the group engaged. Blaming the group for a shit session is akin to a plumber blaming his tools when the problem isn't fixed, IMHO.

I met some very nice people there.

And the expression on the facilitator's face when every single woman ended up with ECS or Ventoux delivery maxed up with pain relief was priceless. :o

Made some of the best friends of my life in NCT class. SO GLAD I didn't give it a miss.

Littlepeapod, I think you are being a little unfair to fabsmum. She has come on and admitted that some facilitators aren't good. She has also said she covers whatever the group ask for. Clearly she's doing well if the vast majority of her groups go well. It may well be that the odd woman there is simply grumpy and wouldn't respond to any teaching style other than getting up and taking the class herself.

I think another problem may well be that the couples in the group are all coming from a different starting point. Some women may really want the sticky notes on the bits and everything explained as if they were 11. As I said, our teacher was very good but still didn't deliver what I wanted which was info on what to do after the birth. I didn't find any of the classes informative because I had already researched everything from tens to how each position tilts the pelvis. But that wasn't the teacher's fault.