to think NCT antenatal courses are pretty much a load of crap???!

[Gateau]

What a waste of money. Yes, you meet some good friends from it, but IMO that's one of the only positives.
They draw over about six weeks what could be said in one or two classes. All the members of our course said that.
The course is almost all about the woman's 'birth experience' which I found just makes women obsess about the birth itself. So many women I knew were "disappointed" with the birth, when surely it's not all about teh birth, but more about the wonderful reward you get at the end?And they barely touch on having a C-section - which is what I had.
And there's all this rubbish about "challenging" the medical staff when they suggest you have a C-section- with what energy, after 14 hours in labour? And when they say either have a c-section or risk endangering you and the baby, what choice is there?
our NCT teacher asked me to do a talk to her new group post-baby - or rather I was the only one who said I would. She very much disliked that fact that I was telling them I bottle-fed (because we are breaking the breastfeeding law, of course)and that I DIDN'T advocate sitting around the house in pjs after the baby was born - it doesn't suit everyone's state of mind. The NCT IMO is dogmatic.
I think the NCT course would be much more productive if it focused a little more on the early parenting side of things - that's where me and most of my NCT friends could have done with the advice!!

no, had better things to spend money on than extra classes telling me how childbirth might be. like baby essentials (cot, bed linen, nappies, wipes, clothing etc).
good for you having the option to do both.

Agree that I wouldn't bother doing both NCT & NHS classes but our local hospital doesn't actually offer any antenatal classes at all! And I wouldn't underestimate how desperate first time mothers are for as much information as possible on pg and childbirth.

However, one of the main points of the NCT is to bring new parents/pg women together and most branches offer lots of other forums to do this eg, lunches, coffee mornings etc. These are usually free/min. charge and you don't have to be a member to attend.

Re costs: Anyone requesting info online about classes in the two areas I work in completes a form where they can tick a box to request info on reduced prices and payment by installments, so it's there right from the off. It's a standard NCT form but I can't guarantee every area uses it and haven't time to search every course listed on the NCT website.

Re info covered in classes:

A NCT colleague and I have been wondering whether it would be useful to offer workshops of approx two hours each specifically for c-section, for water birth, concentrating on breathing/relaxation, for postnatal, etc so parents could, in effect, put together their own course or add on to an existing NCT/NHS/independent/hypnobirthing antenatal course. I'd be interested to hear what people on here thought.

(The pricing, marketing, viability of these workshops is another question altogether!)

Okay so what I seem to have picked up in response to my questions is that there is not a core syllabus, so each course is entirely dependent upon what individual teachers want to teach.

What I have also picked up in response to my questions is that there is not a formal tested feedback loop post-registration to assess teacher performance and coach teachers and help them to develop, and that the only way of doing so is to make a formal complaint.

I did read that there was a strong body of evidence that suggests that NHS patients got better outcomes the more informed they were. I am not sure if this extends across to childbirth but I can't imagine a reason why women giving birth would be different.

The comment that "childbirth would be somewhere back in the dark ages if it (the NCT) did not exist" seems to me to be entirely ludicrous and illustrates rather precisely why I am simply not compatible with the NCT.

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I know someone who trained as an NCT teacher a few years back. The impression I got was that the training is pretty rigorous and that there definitely is a core syllabus, although there also seemed to be a good degree of flexibility built in, to allow for the teacher to respond to the needs of particular groups/clients. Which to me seems to be the essence of good teaching - knowing what information you need to impart, but also not being hidebound by such a prescriptive syllabus that there's no room for breadth.
As a qualified teacher myself (education not NCT) I would be really surprised if there weren't opportunities for ongoing professional development after registration! However, as a private setup rather than government funded, maybe not!!
Hopefully someone will come on this thread and enlighten us!!

Quattro - no, there's no core syllabus in terms of what we are supposed to teach in our classes....this is set by the class and is moveable dependent upon their needs and wishes. However, all NCT teachers will be sure to cover the "main" topics - eg pain relief, positions, breathing etc - some of which may not come up on the agenda but without doubt will be needed to be taught. This flexibility allows us to reach different types of parents and cover their specific needs... each group will be different. For example i had a couple in my last class with a sick baby (in utero) and they were having a planned caesarean under general anaesthetic. This is not something I normally have to cover in detail as the majority of C-sections will be done with a spinal or epidural (which I do spend a good deal of time on). However, I was able to amend the class structure to incorporate more time on c-sections with GA. There is a very strict syllabus for the training of the NCT teachers and it's a University Diploma which is very detailed in anatomy, birth, teaching skills, reflective practice to name but a few aspects. It can take up to 7 years part time to complete and is extremely tough (take it from me - having studied an Masters degree in the past, this is on a par for me). In any event, in terms of on-going assessment and training. All teachers are regularly assessed by the NCT. There is a structure whereby it is possible to become an advanced teacher after teaching a lot of hours and undertaking additional training. There is facility to train as a tutor - requiring further studying to get a university degree. The NCT takes the training of its students very seriously. Teachers also have to attend study days every year and have to keep on top of the latest developments. They are regularly reviewed.... hope this clarifies some of your points.

On another point re. the dark ages - have you read any of the midwifery journals or handbooks for midwives in the 1950's for example?? Take a look and you will see just what I mean about how things have changed... thank your lucky stars...

There is continuing professional development:

• each teacher must teach a minimum amount each year

• each teacher must attend a minimum number of study days or professional fora each year

If a teacher is not able to do the above, she must explain why and her Licence to Practise may not be renewed.

We have to pay a fee to the NCT each year for our Licence to Practise/registration.

We are expected to maintain links with local health professionals. For me this means visiting local hospitals and sitting on the Maternity Services Liaison Committee. Obviously all that is done in my own time, unpaid (including the study days/fora. The NCT will fund the cost of two of these each year, to the value of approx £50 per event. Find me a conference, other than the freebie at the NEC in May each year which costs £50 or less..... Anything over that, the teacher must request funding or pay herself).

We can also claim a certain amount each year to renew equipment (a pelvis and doll costs well in excess of £100 - this is above the annual budget) and towards the cost of a professional journal e.g. Practising Midwife, MIDIRS, British Journal of Midwifery.

A teacher is re-assessed one year after qualification - her classes are observed - and thereafter, I think, every 3 years. (Haven't got that far yet!) She must also attend regular obstetric update days - led by midwives - and observe another teacher. She will not be paid for the time she spends observing another teacher but will have petrol reimbursed at 20p per mile (woo hoo!)

Hope that clears up a bit. Got to go and see my M&D.

Oh - and the NCT finds out about what we've been up to by making us complete a return each year. On there we broadly have to supply the following info:

How many courses, hours, couples we have taught

How many parents we have been in contact with in addition to our teaching work

Which conferences/study days we have attended

Outreach work, other voluntary work we may do in branch.

Lots of other stuff I can't remember now but if we don't complete it, our Licence to Practise won't be renewed.

Ah, thanks Pruners. I hadn't quite picked up that the NCT considered the dark ages to be the 1950s.

I can't comment on whether or not the NCT has or has not been "a big player in getting things changed" presumably you mean in maternity care from the 1950s to date. It seems extremely likely that things would have changed and evolved in any event, but I don't know anything about the extent of the NCTs involvement. Your claim seems a bit more reasonable and measured than the original one though!!

I don't know whether or not maternity services have improved in that time either, but that perhaps is a different discussion.

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Pruners, I had a quick look at the NCT website

One of the claims they made on there was that 1 in 3 children in the UK is currently being born into households receiving means-tested benefits. It then goes on to list the adverse effects of childhood poverty.

I'm really quite taken aback by that statistic. 1 in 3? That's a lot. That's surprising. Is it true?

"childbirth would be somewhere back in the dark ages if it (the NCT) did not exist" seems to me to be entirely ludicrous

Talk to some women in their 70's and 80's now if you want to know what birth was like in the 1950's. Honestly it was shocking. Women were often induced at term - my mil was induced with all 4 of hers. They took her into hospital, shaved her, gave her an enema, broke her waters and put her on a bed in a ward with other women, behind some curtains. Then they left her on her own until she was pushing, at which point she was wheeled into the delivery room and had her legs put in stirrups. She wasn't allowed to have anyone with her in labour - not mum or sister or husband. When my mum was labouring with my brother she was in agony - she had a slipped disc and had been made to lie flat on her back. She was crying behind the curtain and the midwife walked in, said, 'Stop crying, you're frightening the other women', and walked out again. If you were really distressed it was normal for the midwife to simply inject you with a massive dose of pethidine without asking : "I'm going to give you a little something for the pain mrs x'. Informed consent to pain relief didn't exist. Almost all mums were given episiotomies, whether they needed one or not. Mary Cronk has spoken of seeing one of her colleagues doing one AFTER a birth, because she was so nervous of being told off for not giving this mum an episiotomy during labour (baby was born too fast).

Delivery rooms were often set up like operating theatres and women were made to deliver lying on their backs on a narrow table, sometimes on their sides if they were lucky. Often women's glasses would be taken off them before they went into the delivery rooms because they weren't sterile!

Women's babies were taken off them after birth and kept in the nursery. Mums were allowed to hold and feed their babies for around 15 minutes every 4 hours for the 10 days they were kept in hospital. Other than that the babies stayed in the nursery.

The original 'charter' of the NCT, first published in 1956:

That women should be humanely treated during pregnancy and in labour, never hurried, bullied or ridiculed.

That husbands should be present during labour if mutually desired.

That analgesia should not be forced on women in childbirth (and) nor should labour be induced merely to save time.

That more emphasis should be given to self-regulated breastfeeding and rooming-in allowed if the mother wants it, and that future maternity units should be designed with this in mind.

That a mother trained for natural childbirth should be allowed and encouraged to carry out her training fully during labour.

That all mothers should be encouraged to use natural childbirth for the benefit of themselves and their babies and that posters to this effect should be displayed at all antenatal clinics.

That the idea fostered by many medical people today that natural childbirth includes routine internal examination, routine administration of analgesia, routine episiotomy should be dispelled.

As childbirth is not a disease it should take place in the home wherever possible. If impossible the maternity units should be homely and unfrightening and in no way connected with hospital.

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Allowing husbands to be present at the birth is thanks in large part to the NCT.

Also, my first baby was born in Spain where episiotomies, inductions, shaving, enemas, giving birth on your back etc etc is standard, particularly outside the more modern cities. The term 'natural' childbirth does not exist and homebirths are practically unheard of.

There is nobody there lobbying on behalf of pg/labouring women in the way that the NCT does in the UK. I chose to give birth in a maternity hospital that was seen as more 'advanced' as it had a charter that it had more or less based on the NCT charter (one of their mws told me), bar the homebirths. I chose a medicalised birth with epidural etc. But at least I was given the choice

i heard a brilliant documentary on the radio a while back about midwifery. they had these fantastic old midwives on who had done zillions of sometimes really rather complicated home births to great effect. and then come the post-war period, loads of male doctors returning from service and all this work was wheeched away from them and taken into hospitals.

one of the midwives was crying about the things that she and her colleagues had done to women under the instruction of these brutalised men, and it was fifty years ago. something needed to be done and the NCT did it.

PS. all this 'the classes should be made cheaper so more people can go' stuff... who's funding the difference? are all the people who think this actually paying members or are they just shouting from the peanut gallery?

i'm a member, i thought my classes excellent, i would prefer that they had been cheaper or free but they weren't. if more people joined, perhaps they could be.

really, riven? in what way? i don't have any experience of this, other than not having a 'natural' birth, but then i never was going to cos of high bp and other stuff. didn't make any difference to the class for me, though, still felt perfectly included.

it is national childbirth trust, isn't it? not natural.

i'd have thought that someone in the actual NCT HQ would have thought to have an inclusion policy or some other sort of mealy-mouthed document, tbh. but you can't really legislate for people being arseholes, can you? shame, that.

i do think, as well, that these groups can really turn on one strong character in the room, don't you think? i went to one thing and just found it all a bit unbearable because of one really loud, flashy, very rich and wanted everyone to know it woman. but the women on my ante-natal group were spot-on, fortunately. i do trust that they would have supported a new friend whose child was disabled, i really do, they're good women.

Yes, definitely true that not all the groups work. I used to tag along to my friend's NCT group (long story why) and TBH found most of the women hard work at best and unbearable at worst. Though one of that group did have a baby with severe disabilities and they all rallied round her and they are all still in touch 2.5 years later.

TBH, I find that birth in the UK is soooo pro-natural in general - my second birth was in London and the mw just refused to give me pain relief, basically saying I didn't need it . But that's a different discussion I guess.

Ditto riven. I remember going to a postnatal NCT group meet-up, where one of the women inferred that dd's neurological issues may be linked to the fact that I had pethidine during labour. FFS.

I'm sure the NCT is all well and good when everything is 'normal', but I think they struggle to be inclusive if you start to stray away from the norm.