to by annoyed at this NCT antenatal group

[birthstoryvisit]

Ok, I know I'm being unreasonable, that's why I've name changed, but I need to get this off my chest.

My DS is three months' old. Yesterday, I went back to my old NCT teacher's class to give my birth story (long, epidural, ventouse, lots of stiches). A friend with a wonderful birth (waterbirth, soft lights) went too.

They were horrid to me. Did not ask me one question about my labour (I thought that they'd want to know what some of the interventions were really like). Their basic attitude was "You failed to have a natural labour. I do not need to talk to you because my labour will not be like that. I am coming to classes and will have a lovely, natural birth with maybe a bit of gas and air. You are a failure." They spent their whole time asking my friend about her ante natal yoga and whether it was the raspberry leaf tea that ensured the quick labour.

This isn't just me. The first thing my friend said when we left was "goodness, they were a bit judgy weren't they?". I get it, they're first time mums and in denial, but am I being unreasonable to hope that at least one of them has a long labour and needs an epidural?(I know I am really ). I gave up part of my weekend to try and be helpful. Grrr, won't be doing that again.

oranges for you about the non-support at the breastfeeding group and for you that you cracked it yourself.

What an utterly wonderful achievement!!

missimac - wish i hadn't looked at that site now - just brought back all the horrors of my birth even more and made me more blooming terrified.

ok, had a baby 20 years ago and then 10 and 7 years so not that long.. Did pop along to NCT classes to give them another try and just felt the same preachy, silly crap about how you can control labour..

you cant it controls you..

why are you sad for me??? I wasnt at all sad!!! glad I had 4 lovely healthy babies.

Dont presume every woman 'wants' a 'natural' birth, I didnt really care all that much in the first place.. just having a healthy baby was enough for me..

oranges - I have just re-read your post. It's horrible to be made to feel 'different' and 'wrong' and of course you should have had the right sort of support to fix things.

But is it possible that the scenario was interpretable in a different way?

You were having a crap time. Someone sent you to a bf class where there were pregnant women - pregnant women who were a bit worried about how feeding was gonna go for them (because they have heard stories from sisters and friends about the way bf goes, sometimes) and you appear, nervous and hesitant, with a bottle in hand, with your newborn.

Did they look at you 'in horror' or did they look at you and recall the worries and anxieties they already had, and wonder, justifiably, why someone was at a breastfeeding class for pregnant women with a baby and a bottle? Reasonable thing to wonder...and maybe to show their discomfort on their faces?

Then the class facilitator would need to explain, wouldn't she? She would need to say that yes, breastfeeding doesn't always go swimmingly at first, wouldn't she? And that sometimes a bottle is used, and here is a mum showing you all that, yes, it can happen like this?

I'm assuming she did not point and sneer.

This was a really bad moment for you, I accept that, but I don't know how it could have been made better for you.

thebody - eh? where did I say I was sad for you?

Sorry you drew such odd conclusions from 'popping along' to NCT, who don't say 'you can control labour'....

ORANGES take no notice.. posted about the bf and bottle feed before, some people just CANT bf and others simply dont want to.. whats the big deal..

some women want no pain relief other want the whole bag of drugs on offer..

not wrong just all different.. wish women could just mind their own businesses about other womens choices over all of this..

Any one who looks 'in horror' at a bottle feeding Mum is a stupid pain in the ass!!

ignore them.. just sad

well ticktock you did say you were sad that I couldnt have a natural birth and the class I attended didsay one could control birth..

"lot of shite talked about labour imo.. its a process to get your baby out of your body, sometimes its easy and sometimes its hard, have had some experience with 4 kids and all births and labours different. None of that my doing, just luck..."

OK - I had two posterior babies, both over 9lbs. First labour I just sat on the side of the bed waiting for my baby to be born. Took all pain relief I was offered, ended up with a forceps birth, a postnatal infection, a knackered pelvic floor and weeks of breastfeeding problems.

Third baby was also loooooooong, dysfunctional labour. This time around I had gestational diabetes, just to add to the joy. Instead of going into hospital and behaving in a passive way I stayed at home and mobilised, ate, got support from a doula and a private midwife (got that idea from my NCT class), and ended up with a normal birth - albeit after 36 hours in active labour. No problem breastfeeding, no stitches, one happy mum. You are just wrong to think that how you respond to your labour is irrelevant. If that was the case we might as well all check into hospital the minute we get a contraction, lie flat on our backs and wait for things to go wrong. Some of birth is down to sheer luck - but a lot of it is down to good care and being able to listen to your body, rather than doing as you're told for the convenience of staff.

Oh - and whatever you think, I actually did think it was a shame I didn't have a natural birth first time. I think there's a very good chance I could have avoided needing forceps if I'd been helped more in my labour. I would have vastly preferred to have come away from my first birth in good health, rather than feeling like I'd just been involved in a car accident, and with a bruise, jaundiced baby who didn't feed well.

thebody - I didn't say I was sad!!! Check back the whole thread....I was QUOTING your post!!!

... and this is why I have chosen not to do NCT classes. There is just too much judgement and making me feel bad if my ideas arnt the same. We all want a natural pain free birth but in the end who cares how the baby got here as long as mum and baby are healthy and recovering...

post natal? I dont care when other babies laughed, rolled, crawled, said their first word, its not a competition and I do know my baby wont be 23 years old still learning how to do these things - so in the end what does it matter????

Yikess if you don't care how the baby got here as long as mum and baby are healthy and recovering then probably classes of any sort are not for you, I agree.

On the other hand, plenty of women want to have an experience of birth that is respectful, that considers their preferences, that involves their partner as much as wished, that puts them and their needs at the centre of any decision-making rather than hospital policy, that avoids things like unnecessary episiotomy, enemas, shaving, induction, that regards genuine choice in birth and labour as important....all things which NCT has campaigned on.

People who think 'who cares?' about any of this, because physical health is the only thing that matters to them, are welcome to that choice as well! To say that people holding a different view is to be judgemental is, however, quite wrong.

My experience of NCT was rather negative. I had gone to try to meet other Mums and, stupidly, wasn't aware of the natural birth agenda. When I explained I was due for a planned C-section due to my heart condition I was met with a decided chill in the air. Unlike LolaPoppins I decided to continue to attend. I remember the teacher's coverage of C-sections with a certain amount of amusement. She emphasised how many surgical staff would need to be in the room observing and taking part and how upsetting some women found this. As she did so I caught her giving me a sidewards glance, expecting me to be concerned at this intrusion on my modesty. Unfortunately for her I am not troubled by natural modesty and said this sounded fine. More surprisingly another expectant Mum also piped up that this sounded like a good deal, followed by three Dads! At this point the teacher lost her composure.

That's so sad EliasMum. We had someone in our group who was having a planned section and we covered it, and unplanned sections, in detail.

We did cover how many people would be there but more in a "you might freak out if you see a packed room and don't understand in advance that everyone has a specific role and it's normal" kind of a way. Our teacher (mum of four) had also had one section and, although she didn't dwell on personal experience, I think that helped.

missismac thank you - will check it out.

I think the fault was actually that the nurses should not have pointed me to to the breastfeeding class, after having promised me at first that they could get someone to come and give me one to one help.

The breastfeeding teacher wasn't sure what I was doing there, and no doubt the pregnant women were hesitant and nervous, but at that point, I was far more vulnerable than them - I had slept four nights camp bed by a new born baby being fed from a tube, after a 4th degree tear.

Someone should have been kinder and had more common sense in the way they dealt with me.

They were blinkered and judgemental 27 years ago when I had my firstborn, and this contributed to the feeling of failure which caused my post natal depression. I didnt get the natural birth either, I couldnt breastfeed for that long either. The way I had been prepared made me feel a failure.

When I had my second I decided not to attend any classes, get the pain relief in early and not to breastfeed. I had quite a reasonable birth the second time and was up and about quicker. I didnt have PND the second time thank God. Fortunately in between the pregnancies I had cognitive therapy so I didnt have any doubts about me actions.

I should have been suspicious about the NCT classes as they were just in one certain area of town, where all the judgemental people live!!!

Who cares what a bunch of first time pregnant ladies in denial think of your birth story anyway? We know what we're talking about, they don't. It's human nature for them to act that way so it's probably best to avoid them!

But it can take a while to get the confidence to accept that you can't do everything by the book, that good enough is good enough and grow an elephant hide (like mine).

Redllamayellowllama I'm not sure I would have been able to ttc baby#2 if he hadn't happened along by accident! I had him by elective section due to my PNPTSD (and crying at every health professional I met) and it totally cured me. My 3rd was supposed to be another elective but I accidentally had him vaginally (loooong story) and although I didn't like it much, I was ok with it all. Get some counselling, I found it really helpful to have a health professional validate my feelings.

20 years ago birth was seen as being a means to an end - the end being a healthy baby. These days, rather than being something that you trust a good midwife to get you through, it's all been turned into some sort of gruesome exam which you have to study and prepare for and you then get graded afterwards: A+ for a drugfree waterbirth at home; automatically downgraded to a C for an epidural; epidural and forceps = D and an automatic fail for an elective CS as you didn't even bother to turn up for the exam. The NCT may say that they don't judge women who failed to have a natural birth but, by promoting an ethos that natural birth is the "preferable" way to give birth, the automatic implication is that any other way is less preferable ie inferior. All 3 of my labours were horrific but my only enduring memory is of being handed my baby because that was my only expectation of giving birth. I find it really sad that so many women's first emotion after birth is not joy at having a beautiful baby but a feeling of failure that, despite all the yoga and breathing and hypnobirthing, they failed to do it "properly". I often use the analogy of marriage - surely it's better to have a disastrous wedding where absolutely everything goes wrong but then have 40 years of wedded bliss than to have the wedding of your dreams but get divorced after a year. The absolute most that you'll be in labour is 3 days - you're a mother for the rest of your life. Has any child ever said to their mum that they hate them because they were born by CS?

This kind of thing drives me crazy.

I am a first timer, due in five weeks, and to be honest, I don't want to listen to anyone's birth story. No two labours are the same. Most will involve a lot of pain. I want my baby to be born alive and well and quite frankly, whatever happens on the day happens on the day.

Most pregnant women hear stories about the horror of labour over and over and over and I don't see how or why that's meant to be helpful. There is NO way that anyone can understand a pain they have never experienced from listening to someone else talk about it... I will never forget having a severe asthma attack and thinking I was going to die in the ambulance on the way to the hospital but you know what? I wouldn't go round to someone newly diagnosed with asthma and regale them with the full account of it. I can't understand why people should be expected to ask questions about something that is, essentially, unknowable and already frightening. What good will it do? You can read about the interventions in any pregnancy book in terms of being informed.. why would listening to one woman's subjective experience improve your ability to cope in labour?

I believe most mums-to-be are not truly in denial. They are terrified. And usually human beings try not to dwell on things that terrify them. So it would make sense that they wouldn't want to hear any more detail about something frightening as it would overload them. Personally, I don't want to hear any birth stories from strangers.. my friends have been honest with me, but have glossed over the worst bits and told me that they are glossing over the worst bits because in the end you do what you do, you don't have a lot of control and what happens, happens.

By the way, I'm not directing this at the OP. I think you felt bad because you were telling them something you fully believed would be helpful and they didn't respond in a way that made you feel heard. I reckon they were all scared beyond belief and blocked it out. But as someone else said, they might think of you later and feel relieved that it's normal not to have a baby born in a soft candle lit room to the sound of chanting and beating drums.

upsylazy Great post. My mother never experienced labour. I was born by CS back in the days when this meant a heavy general anaesthetic and extremely lengthy recovery time due to butcher-like incisions, stitched together by great big metal calipers. Strangely enough, I have never questioned her worth as a mother or a woman because she didn't push me out.

I went to NCT classes and really enjoyed them tbh, and we are still very good friends with 2 of the couples we met there.
However, I did find them to be heavy on the natural birth agenda and quite dismissive of me when I said I intended to take as many drugs as possible if I felt I needed them (which I did as it turned out and I still think that the epidural is one of the best inventions known to man-particularly since having DD2 with no pain relief through no choice of my own )
I think the trick with the NCT class is to take what you want from it-they do teach you lots of good stuff, and ignore those who want to be judgey.Im fairly sure that half the judgey ones dont end up having the natural births they plan on in the end anyway.

OP that is just plain rude what happened to you though.

Im fairly sure that half the judgey ones dont end up having the natural births they plan on in the end anyway.

is this really something to be pleased about??

I dont consider it pleasing or not pleasing really-my smiley was more in friendly support of the OP who has just been at the wrong end of some apparently very judgey women whom she willingly gave up her time to go and talk to.
I dont care either way what kind of labour someone has. As long as the baby arrives safely, and the Mum is well and happy with what has happened, then why on earth does it even matter wether its natural or not?
I just think its sad that people would judge someone elses assisted (for want of a better word)birth in comparison to their own proposed natural birth, when they have not yet experienced it and dont know how they will feel when they are actually in Labour.And in my own NCT class experience there was a certain irony in the fact that the woman who was militant to the point of it being slightly annoying about how the best births are totally natural and how she wouldnt dream of relying on drugs, (before she had had any actual experience of labour) by her own admission had never been so pleased as when her pain relief kicked in.She laughed at how she had been before herself afterwards, which was fine and we were all able to laugh with her.If she had been upset by it then obviously it wouldnt have been funny.

i was rather annoyed by the 'they'll learn' tone of many posts - wishing ill on women in labour seems in fantastically poor taste to me.

hopefully we all get what we want - minimal trauma in labour, and a nice healthy baby.

Yes, thats what I said I think?
And I dont think I wished any ill on anyone and nor would I.

But in relation to the OP its also poor taste to judge and belittle someone elses birth experience I think, wether you have given birth 10 times or you are just about to for the first time, every birth is different, every woman is different.And I guess this thread has quite a few people who have experienced negative judgement on their chosen, (or not through choice) birth circumstances.So its not surprising some people feel a bit annoyed with those that have treated them unfairly.