anyone else disappointed with NCT group/friends?

[DIngdongmerryilyonhigh]

Everyone told me I should do NCT because I'll make a group of lifelong friends with a shared experience but, 18 months on none of us are in touch. My group of five were an older group we all are 35+ and everyone has a career. The first six months we met up regularly as you do. By this time two of the group were already saying motherhood wasn't what they expected it to be like, much harder, and they couldn't wait to go back to work. By nine months everyone but me was back at work so all the meet ups stopped, everyone seemed to return to their usual friendships and by my DD's first birthday only two of the group turned up.

Anyone else found their NCT group hasn't offered the friendships they'd hoped? Every class/group I go to seems to be full of NCT groups.

I don’t think what you’ve described is uncommon; it’s a strange set up in many ways, the NCT thing. I still speak to mine (4 years later), but we’ve all moved, some abroad. I made better friends with people I met in pregnancy yoga and ‘on the circuit’. I also know people who did NCT and don’t even speak to their group anymore, so it’s normal for everyone to move on.

I think these things vary. A lot. Because, by the very nature of it, you're thrust together with people with whom all you have in common is that you're expecting a baby at the same time. I think your expectations of "lifelong friends" was probably unrealistic. I've made one good friend from each of the two groups I joined and have a circle of acquaintances that I may still meet up with from time to time. Your group doesn't sound too dissimilar.

If you're at home with your DD, you may find you have more luck with people in a similar position. I made good friends taking my DC to some baby groups when they were a little older and then again when they started school. The NCT honestly isn't the be all and end all.

I didn't do NCT but from talking to others your experience seems normal. Why would you become lifelong friends with a load of randoms you meet in an antenatal class? It makes no sense at all to me

It was the same with my group. I think it is really common - I only see one mum now as our DC are at school together but we are very much only nodding /hi as I am with other school gate folk. It was nice to share those first few weeks but we didn't have much in common beyond babies / roughly same area it was always a bit polite / situational.

I only spoke to one person after the group finished and by the time DS was 6 months I stopped speaking to her too. They were not my kind of people.
One woman (on her second child) asked whose blood was going into the placenta/baby. "Is it mine or the Dads blood".
We were never going to be friends!

And I know that sounds judgy but that was one of a few stupid things said and I couldn't help it.

I was in quite a large NCT group - there were 8 couples. Some of them got on well and I think are still in touch, but they were very wealthy - even though DH and I had a joint gross income of not far off six figures when we had ds we felt like the poor relations! One couple got married and invited everyone else in the group except us, which kind of cemented the message we didn't fit in.

I had a very similar experience to you OP. All 35+, similar careers, similar in many ways, but the meet ups whilst a crucial part of my social life in the first few months, died off and I never really felt that I clicked on an individual level with any of them. I did however make 2 good friends at the free NHS ante natal classes, and again in the first year of my first baby's life through post-natal groups and other activities. That baby is 12 now and I'm still in very regular contact with some of them, I would call them my closest friends now.

Yep my NCT group was pants. I was assigned a group outside of my town and I didn’t drive so it was difficult to keep in touch.
In the end I left them to it, especially after talking to one Mum who said that a couple of the “alpha types” bullied her into bottle feeding her breastfed baby and she didn’t want to. Yes that sounds made up, but no it wasn’t.

There were five in my group; we all kept in touch and saw each other for the first 3-4 years. The babies are now 8.5 and I no longer see two of them, but the other two are two of my best friends. We are all different; one of my friends is 15 years older than me; but the thing we all had in common is that non of our own parents lived anywhere close to us. That was the thing that I think bonded us.

My NCT group is really unusual. We are still in contact 22 years later. There's 12 of us. This is made up of NCT and NHS Parentcraft groups. We obviously don't see each other with the kids now. We go away once a year too. I think though, most of the group didn't work or part time. This seems to be the norm now.

It's total pot luck. I really like my group and we all WhatsApp regularly still, but we're not best mates. Some of my friends are really close to their NCT group, still do holidays, birthdays etc together ten years later. Others hated it and never managed a single meet-up. Totally and utterly random!

We've just moved 200 miles away, so although this is baby number 2 I am mulling over doing it again just to meet some other new mums!

I think we got lucky. Apart from one couple who moved away four years on we are all still friends. I see two of the ladies more than the rest but we all get along. I think it helped that alot of us work in the same profession.

My expectations were far too high - from friends I expected a really tight knit group that would be doing days out/parties for years like my friends had.
Our group was perfectly nice but really nothing in common I met up with a coupe of the for a few weeks but once I started baby groups I made friends I had more in common with- I still see 1 from antenatal group we meet up every couple of moths and our girls are nearly 5 and our second dc are close in age.

My group met up every few weeks during maternity leave but that stopped when we all returned to work. I think generally the lack of binding was because several of the babies arrived very early (2 months+) which meant there was a spread in baby age of almost 2.5 months. That’s huge when they’re tiny.

I found NCT really supportive for first year, regular meet ups and 1st birthday parties. After that it fizzled out but I think a couple of them stayed friends. My dh and I were 19 and very poor whilst everyone else was mid thirties- 40 and professionals. (My mum paid for our membership). Dh and I really enjoyed learning more than we would have in just the nhs class and spending afternoons in fancy houses(we had a flat above a shop). I was under no illusions of lifelong friendships!

We stuck out like sore thumbs in our group, being the only ones without sports cars and not being really in to rugby and formula one. The guys had all arranged to meet up for a drink when I was 9 months pregnant. DH (who doesn't drive) got a train and a bus to meet them at some pub only to find they had either cancelled or gone somewhere else without mentioning it to him.

We couldn't be arsed after that and didn't bother to go to the meet up after we had our babies.

Our children are turning 3 soon and I am still in regular contact with 2-3 people and in semi regular contact with a further 2-3. I think what helped was having a couple of quite gregarious individuals in the group who pushed at the start and that helped us all to form friendships.

I can imagine if the group had been filled with people like me that that would not have happened.

very similar experience to iperfercoffeetotea they all living in huge houses, (we lived in a flat.) All they wanted to speak about was how to spend their husbands bonus and bitching about their cleaners/ housekeepers/ nannies. We had zero in common, I didn't see them after dd was 6weeks or so. TBH I was gutted at the time.

We didn't do NCT, but we did do the antenatal group. Eight months on, four of us (out of ten) are in contact via WhatsApp but it's getting a bit strained now, can go weeks without talking. We use to try and meet up about once a month but as people go back to work, it obviously isn't as easy.

Like others said, it's a group of strangers who have nothing in common other than you have a baby. Not everyone is going to get in and not everyone will stay in contact.

I think it really depends on who you get and your lifestyles. I know in my group, we've all stayed in touch (our kids are 5 now). But we did all go back to work at different times and after the first year, it became a lot harder to meet up. I went back to work at 11 months, but only part-time, several others were still off, but others were back to work, but different days than me, so our schedules never complemented each other. We did keep in touch via Facebook though and would meet up a few times a year, especially around our dc's birthdays. They aren't my closest friends, but they were still a great resource for me when I needed it.

Agree that it's total pot luck and I don't think your experience is unusual; somewhere else down the road will be a group who have all decided to stay at home and one will feel left out because she's itching to go back to work. There isn't any other situation where you would expect to become close friends with six other people based on one arbitrary common factor.

NCT friends are a bit like the friends that you make in freshers' week. You bond unnaturally quickly over a very intense shared experience and it's only after six months or so that you start to get a sense of whether you have anything in common with these people beyond your baby's birth month. In your position I would start going to the local 'bumps and babies' NCT coffee mornings.

See where I'm from (NI) we don't have NCT classes and the nhs one was massive and no one spoke to each other.

I didn't really have any friends when I was off with DS1 so was quite lonely. With DS2 I made more of an effort to go to some mums and tots groups but didn't actually make any friends at them. I only really made friends when they started school.

Everyone told me I should do NCT because I'll make a group of lifelong friends with a shared experience but, 18 months on none of us are in touch.

I didn't go to an NCT, or any ante natal, class.

Of the many and varied bases for lifelong friendships, I can't imagine "having unprotected sex around a similar time" to be one if I'm perfectly honest.

It sounds like you have very high expectations of people whose only common ground with you was A Baby and I haven't yet found a less interesting or more boring common ground to have with someone and my eldest is 19.

I think PPs are right that you can just as easily make friends elsewhere.

To give you some contrast, I adopted our baby DD so obviously didn't have an NCT group. My 'mum friends' have come from just playgroups, etc, but mostly from a baby swimming class we went to for a few months. Signing up to something regular, where you see the same gang every week, really helps.

Obviously this I going to vary vastly depending on the people in your group and whether the logistics suit you.
The NCT course was the best money I spent during pregnancy. When the babies were little we saw each other weekly if not more and there was A LOT of support, and laughs. Now the logistics have changed with people going back to work, more children so we see each other more sporadically but the groups always there to say ‘anyone at a loose end want to do something?’ And with 8 of us