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!!

"The fact that it advocates what many people think is outdated advice is hardly going to be common knowledge among pregnant women FFS! They don't even know the first thing about pethidine; they are unlikely to have studied the varying political tides of the last 40 years of the childbirthing movement."

There speaks the voice of knowledged. Not.

Teachers are required to do obstetric update training on a regular basis, and the classes are taught by midwives.

We know loads about pethidine! Or at least I do. I've got a file an inch thick with all the latest research on pain relief for childbirth, plus I get regular feedback from mums about their personal experiences with using it. Most NCT teachers I know are the same. Plus a good proportion are also practicing midwives as well as being antenatal teachers.

"fabsmum sounds like your a good teacher with a balanced course. Unfortunately not all teachers are like you and many inflict their views upon the group, not necessarily on purpose."

Yes - but this also happens in NHS classes. Regularly.

Fabsmum, I think she was referring to pregnant women not knowing the first thing about pethidine, not the NCT teachers.

fabsmum, I,the OP made it clear from the beginning I wasn't slagging off the NCT as a whole, just the classes.

well what a thread this has turned out to be!
fabsmum, you sound great wish you'd been my teacher

each person will be different in what they will want from antenatal class and each teacher will be different too.

trouble is you don't get choice, you get put in with the one with a place/space
i too was in tears after sanctimonious claptrap from my AN NCT teacher. Wish I was pregnant now! would be so much better informed

i did get the sense from my class that the whole experience was about the BIRTH and not about the BABY

fabsmum, my point exactly. some nct and nhs teachers do enforce their personal views in their lessons which is unethical.

"Fabsmum, I think she was referring to pregnant women not knowing the first thing about pethidine, not the NCT teachers"

Didn't help that my manic three year old was trying to dismantle my plastic teaching pelvis while I was typing!

Gateau - I've just re-read your OP.

You said:
"She very much disliked that fact that I was telling them I bottle-fed"

Wondering what made you think this? Did she actually say anything to you that made you think this?

"(because we are breaking the breastfeeding law, of course)"

Wondering what exactly you mean when you say this. The NCT don't advocate that everyone can or should breastfeed, only that everyone should have access to information about the benefits of bf and that mums who choose to do it should be supported to make it work for them.

"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."

No - and that's fair enough. Teachers know that everyone is different, and they know that this won't be the right thing for some people. Your teacher wouldn't expect you to come along and say anything other than what your personal experience was.

"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!!"

If the entire class had said - we want to spend most of the course on postnatal issues then the teacher would (or should) have adapted the course to suit your needs. However - most parents WANT to spend a lot of time talking about labour and birth - they ASK for it. It's also true that most mums want, and are capable of having, a normal birth and they want to know as much as they can about it. What's the teacher to do? Refuse to cover it?

However, I do understand what you're saying on the teaching about informed consent. Maybe this wasn't covered well in your classes.

"fabsmum, my point exactly. some nct and nhs teachers do enforce their personal views in their lessons which is unethical"

Not defending it!

At least though in NCT classes your teacher will have been expected to debrief and reflect on her own experiences at length while training and to think about the way they might affect her approach to teaching. Not so with NHS staff.

i expect that reflecting on your own experiences doesnt really give you an insight into the broad spectrum of births, personalities, temprements and experiences people have. that obviously doesnt work for every teacher and do you need training to realise this.

Fabsmum, I gave my more in-depth opinions on the NCT questionnaire (which I NEVER heard anything about again) and to be truthful am far too busy to do it all again.
IMO, the NCT antenatal classes I ATTENDED were a total waste of money. On that basis, I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. Your course probably isn't - but the one I went on was. ANd TBH that's all I'm really concerned about.

Has anyone been on any decent antenatal classes ? Either NCT or NHS ?
Mine were crapolla too. Just signed up to my next lot. Only to meet new mums.

Whilst informative in the areas that our NCT antenatal teacher favoured, the information was biased to say the least.

Bizarrely enough there was no breastfeeding session as she let us parents to be set our own agenda and we presumably forgot this area when we were all nervous at our first session and asked what we felt we would like to cover. She quoted WHO guidelines as a reason to not meet our request for a making up formula bottles demonstration so feeding was not covered at all apart from feed on demand advice etc.

She was anti drugs and although correctly talked us through the cascade of intervention that an induction or pain relief can lead to it was clear that any pain relief was in her opinion purely for the woman's benefit and we should all think about the consequences for baby and hopefully be able to refuse pain relief other than gas and air if we wanted to do the best thing for our babies. Men were advised to help their partner be strong and stick to any "no pain relief please" type birth plan that we would naturally be writing up .

She wanted us to spend a lot of time practising various positions and getting dp/dh to rub lower back/massage etc. People were saying that they liked x or Y position etc but surely unless/until you are actually experiencing labour pain you have no idea what may help you out position wise. I felt we could have just been given the photocopied sheet depicting the various positions and have better spent the time on talking about strategies for coping with tiredness once in the thick of nightfeeding etc.We sampled various scented oils etc and listened to calming music. We did not talk about packing hospital bags to include industrial quantities of maternity pads, flip flops to avoid feet having contact with the grubby shower and bathroom floors and other useful tips like taking in a pack of disinfectant type wipes to clean the less than pristine surroundings we would find ourselves in once we got to hospital.

I rememer her asking us to think about how long we would take off work for maternity leave and being amazed that 2 of us were planning to take less than 6 months. We explained about the concept of having no career to go back to or being self-employed meaning no money coming in and were told that we might change our minds and want to be SAHM's after the birth anyway, which I suppose we might have done but we didn't.We did an exercise in "scheduling" our lives after the birth/return to work which was a useful thing to consider but then she doubted the reasonableness of factoring in the use of my secretary to get lunch and run errands to the pharmacy (which had always happened before pregnancy/maternity leave anyway).

I think she could have helpfully directed us more by giving us a pick and mix list of topics to choose from when we discussed what we wanted to cover and allowing extras to be added and she should have been more informative about useful hospital bag items instead of taking the "well, your new baby just needs its mummy really doesn't he/she" hippy approach.

yes oblomov, I really felt the NHS classes were very well informed, there was no bias from the midwife running the class and there was plenty room for discussion. No one was rushed out of the class, the midwife was happy to run over the allocated time to answer any questions.
Friends were made in the class, we all talked to one another. Everyone I spoke to had a positive view on the NHS classes.

and on another positive note, the NHS classes offered practical advice about what to be packing in the hospital bag, what may go wrong, we discussed the nights and lack of sleep, how to hold baby etc etc. didn't touch much on the airy fairy stuff tbh.

I suspect that the uber middle class yummy mummies are a difficult group to please.

I am grateful to my nct ante natal teacher. The nhs classes just did not exist for me so I have nothing to compare.

What on earth have uber middle class yummy mummies got to do with anything? Whoever they might be...I might have guessed some sad person would have brought class into it.
if you want to attach labels, are you a lentil-eating, sandal-wearing tree hugger???!

Yes but the NHS course I attended involved the midwife debriefing her experience and forcing her opinions so like a lot of this thread it may be down to who is running the classes and who is actually attending them.

I am a postnatal trainee and have observed local NCT antenatal classes. My opinion is that the classes are very good but that each course is different and very dependant on who is actually attending.

The feedback received is generally very good too, but there will always be constructive criticism depending on the INDIVIDUALS. Considering each class tends to have 8 couples - that's a lot of opinions to cater for and of course there are going to be some aspects of the course that challenge your opinion, just as topics on here do breast/bottle, home birth vs hospital, working mum / SAHM.

If you go to an antenatal class you want information hopefully put across in a balanced way by an impartial teacher/facilitator. So does everyone else so that means you will get to hear about things that you consider irrelevant or not for you but equally may be just what the person sitting next to you needs to hear.

Maybe the question should be how exactly can the classes cater for everyone without offending or making information uncomfortable for people to hear?

Why did yuo do a talk for them Gateau if you think it is all shit?

Yes and how do you know she 'very much disliked the fact that I wastelling them Ibottle-fed'?

I know nowt about NCT btw, merely curious.

Why shouldn't I? I wanted to give the new mums MY REALISTIC perspective on things.

Wot about my second question?

But that is just ONE perspective. How do you know if you offended anyone else?

Sorry; the mums-to-be

Answer: You should have seen her face