To think I just wouldn’t fit in at NCT classes?

[Tulipsanddaffs06]

First time mum, 24 weeks pregnant. I feel a little lonely tbh as none of my friends are pregnant and I’d like to meet some other pregnant women due around the same time as me is poss.

Thing is, I don’t want to breastfeed (please can we not make that the main focus of this post!) due to the shape of my uterus it’s also looking like I might have to have a c-section too.

So I’m not really sure what DH and I would really get out of NCT classes other than meeting parents to be at a similar stage?

I’m worried I’ll be judged massively for not breastfeeding, I’ve heard they can be a bit cult like in how they push breast feeding.

Has anyone been to NCT classes and knew they weren’t going to breast feed? Did you get an okay reception or no?

Only two of our group (8 families) breastfeed. The course was very much about c section too and 2 women knew in advance that's what they were having. We're a great bunch of friends now and they've really made my mat leave great from the meet ups to the WhatsApp support at 3 am.

Mine was a mix. 1/3 of the group didn't breastfeed and 1/3 had a c section. Some people felt the course was unbalanced and did promote the whole 'natural' route but oxytocin proved not to be enough for the vast majority of us to have births without intervention of some sort. All birth plans went out the window to some extent.

I feel like I picked up my friends along the way at toddler groups etc but if you're not especially outgoing NCT does force you to form a group. Most people I know found the group fizzles out a bit once the maternity leave is over. With hindsight, I'd still do mine but my expectations would be different.

I didn’t know about NCT, but I don’t think I’d have bothered if I had, what do they teach you about birthing and feeding that your midwife can’t? I don’t think it would have been for me. I hung out with my husband, my mum, my brother and my friends I had before I had my baby when I was on what was a comparatively short maternity leave. I made a few friends through toddler group, neighbours who have similar aged children and now a few school parents I don’t feel there is it ever was a gaping hole in my life because I didn’t do NCT.

I think the reason why I’m quite keen to perhaps try so e sort of antenatal group is that people say ‘oh you’ll make friends at baby and toddler groups.’ And I always assumed that people do to be fair.

But I’ve read a lot of threads on here that people have gone to baby and toddler groups and lots of the women at them are already friends or know one another from NCT classes etc and often have formed their friendships already and it can be quite isolating and lonely I guess I’m worried that if I don’t attend an NCT clsss or something, that I’m going to get to baby or toddler groups and I’ll have the same experience

It doesn’t help that I live in a relatively ‘small’ cliquey place anyway where a lot of people have grown up in the same villages, went to the same schools etc. Even though our local city is a 30 min drive away, I think I’d be more inclined to drive to some groups there as I think it’ll be less likely that people all already know one another.

From what you've said, if you have the cash and the time available, I'd do the group in your position. If you find that you click with other people better along the way, that's obviously fine and if you don't you might be glad you tried NCT. Be mindful not to Iimit yourself to meeting up with your group at the expense of exploring new opportunities. Some of my group met several times a week and are now not nearly so close. I realised early on this was too much for me and have up kept the other friends more these days anyway.

I hope you find company that you enjoy whatever you do.

I think it's worth doing an ante natal class for those reasons.

I made friends at baby groups with my second BUT I knew the group as I'd gone with my first and knew that I could get out of the house with a newborn.

When it's your first, going out to a group can feel really daunting at first. If you've already made a friend it's easier to go together for sure.

It really depends whether you're happy to go to a baby/toddler group on your own with baby initially or would want to arrive with people you already know. I'm not bothered about turning up on my own and, as an introvert, didn't really want to be hanging around as a group anyway, but it helped others feel more confident.

The better baby and toddler groups will make an effort to introduce you to someone when you arrive, if you want that. Surely not everyone in your area will have done NCT as it is a LOT of money.

It really depends on your personality, what there is to do in your area etc. I've also never needed or wanted to WhatsApp anyone at 2am so quite glad I missed out on that aspect of it!

My NCT leader was very old-school NCT in terms of being focussed on 'natural' birth rather than c-section, and encouraging breastfeeding, but I also found the sessions more useful as a means of getting to be pregnant/a new parent alongside others. As it happened, of the 8 of us, 3 had c-sections, and I would say that the feeding decisions each family made were on a sliding scale between bottle feeding from birth to combination feeding, to extended EBF.

Now our kids are 3 I'd say that the stuff about how we delivered our babies/how we initially fed them has faded into insignificance, but tbh that happened almost immediately. It was so much more about having someone to go for a walk with, or text at 2am. Our children were one another's first buddies and it's lovely to have that relationship. I know it's not this way for everyone but it's worked really well for us.