to think that, even considering the NCT's reputation, this breastfeeding counsellor was *shite*?

[SarahAndQuack]

I've just had the NCT session with the breastfeeding counsellor. I'm doing NCT because I'm pregnant with my first biological baby; I'm on my own and I have a 9 year old who's my ex-partner's biological daughter, and she and I did NCT then too - so obviously, I do get that some bits will be less relevant to me. But mostly it's been useful as I've never given birth before, and when we did NCT most of a decade ago I was concentrating more on the 'partner' stuff. Anyway, that's the background.

The counsellor started out by describing how, when a baby is born, it can crawl up its mother to find the breast and latch on for itself. She went on about this at some length. Someone asked if this is something likely to happen with a NHS birth and she said absolutely it was. Then she asked if anyone had questions about establishing breastfeeding, so I asked if she had tips for if you had a less-than-ideal birth and no skin-to-skin. I was expecting tips about getting a baby to latch or whatever.

She said in that case, you could feed the baby expressed milk with syringe, then 'later on' try to 'establish' breastfeeding (but no indication of how). Apparently those were the two options: either your baby crawls up your body as nature intended, or you're onto syringe feeding. I thought this was utterly bonkers so the session didn't start well for me.

After that, virtually every question someone asked about FF or feeding expressed milk, she'd look confused and reply 'well ... you could do that. It's your choice! Whatever choice you make is up to you!' Clearly people were asking for actual advice, and clearly she'd been told she wasn't allowed to insist breastfeeding was the be-all and end-all, but she also had nothing helpful to say about anything else.

At some point she split us into two groups and said she'd teach the partners how breastfeeding should work and then they would teach the mums, and she said since I was on my own she'd teach me. She talked me through it and I asked about positions after a c-section, and she replied 'I can only talk about what's straightforward' then got up and walked off, so I was sitting there on my own while everyone else carried on talking. Roughly 40% of women have sections! It's not a niche thing!

I am fully aware other people in the group found it a bit crap; there was a bit of muttering and we were all pretty obviously clockwatching.

Is it me, or is this really shit?

Yep that’s shit. Unfortunately an awful lot of breastfeeding advice is shit. Hopefully you made some friends with other people there? Having someone to roll your eyes with does help.

Does she usually work with kangaroos?

Thank you. Yes, by the end we were all eye-rolling!

She had no sense of humour - at one point one of the dads cracked a joke; we all laughed, and she just sat there looking as if we'd mightily offended her. It was really awkward. But I suppose you are right; it's a bonding experience!

Beat me to it!

Ha! Now I feel like a kangaroo.

It sounds like she was very inexperienced and not sure of herself

In the real world (hospital/home birth) babies do not crawl up their mums. Baby is born, and variously cleaned weighed wrapped or handed straight into mums.arms and baby normally homes in on her boob from there.
In my case, a difficult birth at 7.45 am. I was asleep until 2pm, then I was helped into a bath because I was caked in meconium, then handed ds at 2.30pm. He had also been asleep. He headed straight for my breast as soon as in my arms.

Just tak e it as it comes OP. Few births follow the NCT textbook. Don't worry about the tiny detail.

Weirdly, she was definitely not inexperienced or unsure! She said she'd been doing it for 20 years and was a grandmother, and she had this aura of 'I am the fount of all wisdom'. It was very strange.

I know how babies are born; I was there when DD was born; I'm fine with the NCT being rather hippy-dippy natural birth advocates. I figure if you go for an NCT course you can expect that and I knew when I signed up. But this was proper next-level weirdness and it was definitely not just me being the jaded second-timer who noticed it.

as you discovered with your research nearly half the class will have a c-section (or a slightly trickier birth where the baby might need a bit of suctioning / care / attention or mum might be having stiches etc). Not addressing what to do if things don’t go to plan is bonkers for an advise session

(as it was I had two prem babies with emergency c sections and had great advice to get breastfeeding established (eventually))

That sounds completely unhelpful! If you want any sensible reading on breastfeeding Lucy Webber Feeding Support is a great instagram account.

My baby didn’t do the crawl as I had a c section and I just fed him in recovery with a bit of help from a midwife showing me a good position. No expressing needed at that point

That does sound rubbish, have you fed back to the NCT that you found it unhelpful and felt unsupported?

That's great you got good advice.

DD was born by emergency section and she got sepsis, so although she was full term it wasn't straightfoward, and she did end up breastfeeding successfully though she had a tube to start and we mix-fed all the way through. I was just hoping for tips that'd make me feel more secure - not the message that if you don't get it right straight away it's all doomed!

I was hoping this thread would slightly crystallise what I thought about it TBH. I don't want to be that annoying person who's saying 'well I found it unhelpful but it's not my first baby,' because I do get that NCT is mostly for first-time parents. OTOH if I had never had anything to do with a newborn before, I would definitely have gone away thinking breastfeeding is almost impossibly hard, and being really confused about the other options. And I don't think that was the intention!

No NCT for me as I phoned to arrange attending a class when I was five months pregnant and was told very snootily that there was absolutely no possibility of me getting a place unless I phoned to book within 10 seconds of conception as NCT is the only organisation on the planet that knows anything about how childbirth is really done. So I tried to read about breastfeeding and couldn't get my head around how you would keep track of which boob to feed from next. Then I decided it would make sense when I tried with a baby. It did.

Please put this awful experience behind you, and resolve yo breastfeed if you possibly can, not least because it's free and the faffing with sterilising bottles must be a pain.

Hey OP, I remember worrying how breastfeeding would work if I had to have a C sections. I ended up having an emergency c section and breastfed fine with no complications. Actually still breastfeeding now at 13 months! As soon as I went into the recovery room, they placed my baby on my chest and encouraged the latch. I actually think I received more help with breastfeeding due to the C section as I used the time I was in hospital for 48 hours after wards to ask all the questions possible and get the midwives to check my latch and offer advice. Wishing you luck!

If it makes you feel better about how crap NCT is… we had a session on ‘relaxing during labour’ which included a detailed explanation and long practice of hand massage.
My DH was travelling so I was told to do it to myself. So I sat for 10 minutes giving myself
a hand massage so as to have something to do.

the BF session was rubbish, two couples announced they were definitely formula feeding and left after about 2 Minutes. Ours also told us about the baby crawling up the mother, but said it had Rarely been filmed… lol. I spent a lot of time thinking about how much better I’d be at explaining this stuff than our group leader.

@IdaGlossop, that's really crap how they replied to you!

And YY, I do want to breastfeed - DD was mix-fed (and obviously I did the formula), and the five minutes waiting for a bottle to cool down (or the two for the kettle to boil) when making formula were torture with a crying baby. Very happy to give that a miss another time!

@AOBMGB that's really reassuring! Thank you.

@Leopardspota - oh, no, that sounds so awkward, giving yourself a massage! My friend who did NCT as a single mum had a lot of weird experiences like that. I haven't so far - the main woman who runs it has been absolutely brilliant. But this one, not so much.

Ours wasn't even billed as a 'breastfeeding session' - it was definitely meant to cover formula and mix feeding, so I had really high hopes it was actually going to include useful things. She did tell us that formula in the UK is carefully regulated so you can buy the cheap brand without worrying, but she also said you never need special milk and it's all a con ... which, well, surprised me slightly since I know a few people whose babies couldn't tolerate the cow's milk derivatives in ordinary formula.

You saying you could have explained it better made me grin.

Breastfeeding is one thing that can get close to a cult and a sect - so you need to use your own common sense. There will be certain midwives and breastfeeding consultants (and Fb groups) who would be in disdain for formula feeders. There will be midwives and breastfeeding consultants (and Fb groups) who will be more realistic. I had twins, initially with the help of a midwife they latched and had milk. Then I realised that unless I have this midwife with me as a slave 24/7 positioning the twins, I can’t do it. One of the twins was really tricky to position, one millimeter off and he can’t latch. Very quickly I switched to formula plus expressed milk, and one of the twins breastfed partially. I called a breastfeeding consiltant that we had from my perinatal group (which was an alternative to the NCT group formed by a former NCT nurse), and she was quite realistic, we tried with the difficult-to-latch twin the plastic teat that you put on a nipple and it worked but only a little bit. So that twin was not really breastfed. (I also was bed bound for a few days after birth as I had post dural puncture headache and had to have a blood patch, so husband and midwives fed the twins formula then. So you really have to look at the situation and remember that, for some reason, there is propensity to form cults around breastfeeding).

Also natural birth vs medicated is an area around which cults and sects can form, and I’m hearing NCT prefer the former.

I was in the same boat with my first baby thirty years ago; stupidly tried to sign up for NCT classes when I was actually pregnant! Then once I’d had the baby it seemed everyone else had readymade friendship groups, ho hum.

I did phone for advice a couple of times when I was really struggling though, and both times had a lovely warm encouraging woman telling me I was doing well and pointing me in the right direction, a real game changer. Much better help than I’d had from any of the midwives. Just to say, don’t discount the support you could get as they’re not all like this useless-sounding article!

Anyone else on here feeling that they failed at motherhood because their newborn (5 of them, in my case) didn’t ‘crawl up’ them to be fed?

I just sort of shoved them on!

My daughter was laid up my chest 48 hours after birth (until then we only managed to syringe colostrum due to a traumatic birth, medication etc). Only then was she up to bobbing her way across to one side to feed. So even if it doesn't happen immediately, it can still happen with skin to skin and just staying still for a couple of hours. The hospital breastfeeding lady made everybody but my mum go away, turned the lights down and just chatted to me to keep me distracted long enough that I didn't move baby around. I still think it was some kind of magic she did!

It's bonkers, isn't it?!

I mean, absolutely, it's a lovely anecdote to tell and I get that she was trying to make the point that babies have a natural instinct to feed. But I really needed that balanced with helpful info about what you could do if it wasn't working. Surely if your baby makes it all the way to the nipple by itself, you don't really need a 2.5 hour session on the subject?!

Something I really would have liked help on was what you do if a baby is losing weight but you honestly don't know why. I didn't push the question because I was aware it was a bit niche. But when DD was born, she was ill, and she lost loads of weight and our (in retrospect, crap) health visitor kept scaring DP by insisting she'd need to go back into hospital. The HV insisted we do top up feeds after each breastfeed, and DD would vomit a lot. We think now that she was getting a perfectly adequate amount of breastmilk in the first place, and actually vomiting because she was being so over-fed. So it became a vicious cycle.

I do get that obviously this session wasn't the time or place to get into that kind of specific detail, but when this woman touched on the subject, she just smiled serenely and said you never had to worry about things because if a baby had had enough, it would just stop feeding and you shouldn't force it to feed more; separately she said if a baby wasn't feeding often enough you could just give it a formula top up and it'd be fine. It was as if she didn't see any contradiction there, and I don't think I was the only person thinking it made no sense.

Aw, the hospital lady sounds wonderful!

She was, and it may be worth checking out if your hospital has volunteers to help with feeding.

What a bad experience OP
i remember this from NCT, there was a video of an African lady called “the crawl” maybe YouTube it if it’s still on there?? they played to us and i had my mum with me that night as my partner was working and even she rolled her eyes!!
I have to say in hindsight I found the NCT course to be a total and utter waste of time and money I’d not recommend them I think they’re overpriced and not helpful I’ve learnt more from my friends.

hopefully you will find your tribe just get yourself to some groups you’ll be fine.