To think this was a bit poor of NCT?

[timpanie]

I was a bit on the fence about signing up to NCT (it's not super cheap!) but was persuaded by friends and family who said the local social element is great for mat leave - you can just message the group and say: "who fancies a coffee/a walk round the park?" when you're at a loose end or struggling to get properly out with the baby. NCT also very much emphasise that local side of things. Both my mum and DH's are still friends with some of the mums from theirs now, 30+ years later!

With that in mind, AIBU to be disappointed that half our group live in completely different towns/cities 20-60mins drive from here? They're not even the adjacent towns and they all had their own courses as they're not small places. It's also not like there is a lack of demand in our particular town - it's effectively a London suburb big with young families, and there were several options just within the town.

Our babies are now here and so far all of the suggestions for meeting have been to drive to a "neutral" location normally about 20-30 mins drive away or more than an hour by public transport. Same for classes - we have all of the usual classes in our town but the others have signed up to the sister branches elsewhere.

I can't help but think the organisers should have queried the wisdom of that? Even our course leader was surprised in the first session when she asked where people were giving birth at and got five or six different responses. She said she'd never known such a mix.

The course leader won't have seen where everyone lives when they book. I found my NCT class really disappointing though. Only 2 other couples and the leader was crap. I complained to the head office and got a 50% refund. I would message them and complain and see what they offer.

I wouldn't do NCT again for sure.

I wouldn’t do it again. You can get the course content from other sources for free, and the only advantage is the social side. That aspect is hit and miss, depends on who you get and where you are as to whether you click. I can understand you being disappointed if the other couples are in different cities.

We couldn’t do it in person due to covid, which hindered the social side a little. That said, we still had meet ups for a year or so afterwards, and we’ve stayed in semi-regular touch with one of the couples.

I would have been disappointed too.

Our NCT group of 5 reduced to a group of 3 once our DC started school. 20 years on we still see each other every couple of months, we all have YP at uni plus their younger siblings.

It’s luck of the draw if you make friends with the NCT gang. I joined one in the second nearest town to me due to the area the closest one was in.

Ive kept in touch with one, but it was also London suburbs; almost all families have moved further out for schools etc now they’re of that age.

Primarily they are supposed to be for information so it wasn’t for the NCT leader to flag

The exact same thing happened to me in central London. I spent maternity leave dragging us around between five different suburbs. I really regret it now!

We were kinda the same, a couple of the people lived abit further out but knew what they had signed up for and always came to the central location. This is really bad and I'd be disappointed too

But anyone can book onto an NCT course whose time and venue suits them. It’s not up to the organisers to filter out people who don’t live within x minutes of the venue in case it incommodes other people who want local friends with babies.

It’s far from a guarantee that you’ll find friends via NCT, anyway. Mine was in north London, but also with people coming from distant suburbs, but even the more immediately ‘local’ group simply didn’t gel, and meeting just tailed off within a couple of months. We just didn’t really like one another, and having small babies wasn’t enough for more than a brief camaraderie.

I met more interesting people via the regular NCT coffee mornings — and you don’t even need to be a member to attend those. Just see what’s on in your area.

I certainly wouldn’t do NCT again myself. The class content is available for free from NHS classes, the horror of ‘medicalised birth’ was irritating (especially as about two thirds of my group had complex births, and one nearly died — we definitely needed the medicine…), and it does missell itself as ‘guaranteed friends’ which is of course nonsense.

But no one would join if their advertising said ‘Our content is available elsewhere for free, you will end up feeling as if you’ve failed if you have an epidural requiring a ‘cascade of intervention’, and by the time your baby is six months you won’t remember the faces, far less the names, of your group.’

Thats really shit. The whole point of NCT is you're buying some friends who are on maternity leave the same time as you. Our group met in the local park / coffee shop a couple of times a week. I wouldn't have been arsed to travel to see them.

NCT was a godsend for me but only as we were all local. Far too much faff to travel and I wouldn’t have done it if I already had a support network.
Not surprised you’re narked!

You can book any location online - the courses aren’t very frequent in my smallish town so if you want one at the right stage of pregnancy, you’d have to go to the city nearby. Or go locally but likely earlier in your pregnancy than ideal.

I think you were unlucky. Most people would sign up to nct near where they live surely.

it is a bit random but we (group of 8) saw each other quite a lot during Mat leave. 10 years on I still see some regularly.

Ps I don’t think you can blame nct for people booking a course in a town away from where they lived.

I didn't do NCT because of people I knew's experience with the mums in their groups being quite snobby. I did the free antenatal classes offered in my area and then when baby was born I signed up to loads of stuff like Baby Sensory and also went to loads of free or cheap baby/toddler groups in community centres and church halls. Consequently I made friends with loads of mums and still see lots of them now our children are six.

It’s crappy that you’re all so spread out, but at the same time if the courses closest to them were full then they may have just booked in at the next nearest place. You could see if your local Sure Start Children’s centre does any Mum and baby courses or groups- I did one with DS2, and it was similar to NCT in that it was the same small group of new Mums every week, we were just learning stuff to do with baby care instead of childbirth.
Is there a local Mums and babies Facebook group you could join? If not, why not create one and post it on a few local groups to drum up some interest?
There are a few apps that are purely designed to help local Mums connect and make friends too - Mush is one, I forget the names of the others.

As others have said, NCT antenatal is very hit and miss. I lived rurally when my baby was born, and the other five couples were all at least 20 min drive away; some further. One couple dropped out straight away after the births; the rest of us met up infrequently and some splinter cliques formed.

I ended up being closer to women with slightly older children that I'd met at different NCT events. They helped me a lot in the first couple of years, which were very difficult for me with no family nearby and a somewhat disengaged 'D'H. So, a mixed experience.

That’s such a shame, I had a great experience, but we all lived in villages max 15mins away from the NCT course location.
Now our kids are older we don’t all tend to meet up in one big group as it’s too hard to arrange, I tend to meet the ones closest to me most often, could you try that if you get on with the ones 20mins away? Then you hopefully only need to travel a little.

I had the same it was a mess.

There were only 5 couples and of those only ONE couple lived in our area.
The next nearest is a 25 min drive

AND I had specifically enquired about couples being local before booking.

The one couple we stayed in touch with.are lovely though.