What would you like to have seen at NCT/Hospital classes.

[ValiummyMummy]

I'm doing some research for a book that I am writing. I went to both NCT (paid for) and local hospital (free) classes, but still feel, in retrospect, that there were things that could or should have been talked about, and subjects that should have been covered in more details, that weren't. If you could do your pre-baby classes again, what would you want to see?
Would you want individual classes, restricted numbers?
Should there have been more 'speakers'? A focus on baby basics?
Were there things that you liked? Would you recommend your classes?

Any feedback you can give me would be much appreciated and comments used will be referenced.
Many thanks.

PS - I am a regular MN user/lurker. Ask any of the antenatal March 2010ers- they'll vouch that I am not a total nutter who i say i am.

Hi Valium,

I did both NCT and NHS. As mentioned before NCT is more focus on the "perfect birth". The NHS classes were fantastic - very straight. We had 3 session on birth and 1 session on baby care and BF. I really wanted to thank the MW who explained us everything about babies' poo in the first days, how mums would feel - It made feel less stressed and more "normal" on day 2/3 after birth when I couldn't stop crying. I just remembered the MW drawing a mum's sad face and explaining how the hormones would affect us, etc. Definitely, as Sariska said more on "babycare and what is "normal" newborn behaviour"

Good luck for the book but don't stop baking cupcakes and send send over to the Mar2010 thread :)
x

I did NHS classes, there should have been three classes spread over three weeks. I went to the first one but the midwife did not turn up so we had the receptionist doing the class. I gave the benefit of the doubt and went to the second class, but again the midwife did not turn up so we left and never went back. So i really can not comment on the content of the course other than the receptionist showing us where the toilets where!

Not the best experience.

Re: NCT classes we all during the day and cost too much!

I think it's a fine line between scaring you and making you feel confident that you can give birth. They're not going to tell you that you, for example, will have to share a toilet with another two women giving birth and that their blood might be on the loo/floor, but it is a chock when are in labour and you hear the other women screaming their heads off.

So I think

• less time wasted on how a perfect birth would be
• less time on ice breakers

more time on

• How to handle news that you don't want to hear when under enormous pressure ie we have to use forceps now or you need a c sec
• How to stay mobile and how it helps
• teach husband/partner how to massage your back so to help with the pain (much better than any damn mixed tape of relaxing music or aromatherapy rubbish)
• how to breath through the pain (I had a doula for second birth and her way of coaching me hwo to breath really really helped)

The last thing that ante natal should do is to make you feel bad if you haven't managed a 'natural' birth. NCT classes made me feel like a failure because I didn't manage a natural birth either time!!

Pelvic floor exercises yes, time wasted on th ebenefits of water birth (when they are not actually available in our local hospital) no.

Strangely - when I went to look round the MLU there was another couple there who had just done NCT classes and they said they had been told that the toilets would have blood on the floor - it seemed to me that they had been given all sorts of horror stories about how bad a hospital birth will be. Perhaps every NCT class leader has their own approach because we've not had anything like that yet.

personally I am of the view that the best outcome would be a 'natural' birth (ie Vaginal birth) with as little fear as possible and where the woman uses techniques to deal with the pain and the fear.

Obviously this isn't going to be possible for everyone, but I don't resent the NCT for pushing this as the best circumstance in which to give birth.

oh - and... because of this I think it is SO SO important to involve the men/partners as much as they can rather than keep splitting the groups because it could be your DH/Partner who ends up speaking for you and the better informed they are the better it will all be.

More on - how to breathe during birth, how long the bleeding afterwards can go on for, and definately more about homebirth and your options.

This is all great information and much appreciated: I cannot belive how varied NCt classes can be.

The fact that they just sweep c-section under the carpet as if it never happens (and if it does, you have failed!). NCT bad for this. Hospitals also not great.

Fantastic thread. I did NCT only and they were far too labour and birth focused with very little on baby care. We also had a dreadful teacher who giggled a lot and made us do endless annoying icebreakers, but that's a minor issue. There was an all day ladies only session on bf-ing included and this in, particular, really wound me up. The teacher would barely acknowledge that bf-ing could ever be difficult and completely poo-pooed various peoples' quite reasonable concerns. When I gave up trying when DD was 2dd old I would love to have seen the smug woman and given her a slap!

On the plus side- there were enough sessions to get to know people, who I've seen a lot during maternity leave. But it's not cheap, and given that most people that go to NCT classes are pretty well informed I think that just meeting up for a chat in the pub would have taught us as much as we needed to know!

The NCT actually offer a separate set of classes for after the baby is born. They've just started doing them in my area, I met the new teacher recently, she seemed really nice.

Anyway, said that she trained for about 3 years to run the classes, they cover the feeding/sleeping/body image/sex/going back to work, but that while the NCT has 300 antenatal teachers they only have 60 postnatal teachers nationally.

Actually having some hospital classes! At my booking-in I was told to book with the NCT as the hospital ones were all booked up until well after my due date. Apparently if you book after 10 weeks you're stuffed though they try to keep a few spaces for young/lone mothers who don't have other sources of info.

My NCT class was great but the teachers do seem to teach what the class asks for - my group wanted to know about caesarians and babycare and our teacher was very good. She also knew the local hospitals as she taught the classes there, so could give us useful info on parking and the fact that partners would be kicked out shortly after you give birth if it was outside hours - thank god she said that as it never occurred to me and I shudder to think what my first night would have been like without an interpreter (it was hellish enough with one!)

I don't know how much is NCT teachers really not talking about cs etc, how much is some classes saying they don't want to hear it, and how much is some women just not listening/remembering.

I found NCT classes really useless to be honest. as others have said there was no talk of anything other than a natural birth, nothing about episiotomies, tears, forceps or anything about assissted births. nothing on c-sections, v much oh you may need a c-section but lets not worry about that now.

also made to feel a failure when had to have intervention, an epidural that failed and then nasty 3rd degree tear, forceps etc etc. i had never hardly heard of forceps til they were used on me.

also again too much time wasted on crap like learning each others name etc and not enough facts. nothing on how to deal with screaming baby etc more like making sure you make time for date night with your partner.

the group didnt really gel v well either. nothing wrong with them just we had nothing in common apart from similar due dates. hardly saw anyone after 6 months.

so all in all a complete waste of time and money. would never recommend to anyone. those who have complicated births need all the support they can get rather than being looked down on.

phew rant over cant believe i feel like this years later!!

I wasn't told by anyone about the red health record book we get discharged with. I was discharged without it and strangely the hospital have recorded the wrong DOB. Oh... I was also discharged with my canula still in. Had I known, I would have known to check all these things before I left hospital.
Also, a little info on recovering after a csection would have helped me.
I would highly recommend a session we had on baby play. A Sure Start member of staff was fantastic at discussing the benefits of making a treasure basket from household objects - tactile objects such as sponge, dolly pegs, corrugated card etc. Great for parents on a budget and much better than a lot of plastic shop bought toys that all feel the same.

I wish it had been made totally explicit to me that the really painful bit wasn't just going to be crowning.

I was so fixated on the idea of getting a human head out of my vagina (how? How???!!) that I spectacularly failed to take in the fact that the contractions - long before any pushing was even thought of - would be excrutiating.

I think that's quite common actually - it seems so completely impossible that you are going to have to force a baby out of your fanjo without dying that it is all you focus on.

I wish someone had said, "look, crowning is really painful and intense, but you are going to need strategies for pain relief long, long before that moment arrives. Forget any vague notions you might have about strong period pains in the first stage - seven centimetres dilated is often so painful that you would happily bash your own head against a concrete wall in order to knock yourself out just to make it stop".

In my second labour I coped much better because I was prepared for the pain to be bad from quite early on in the process.

I did NCT classes.

More info on baby care, less on the birth.
The birth stuff in our classes (in St Albans) was really good - very balanced, not all about natural births at all. One of the husbands was a paediatrician working in SCBU at the time and was impressed by how fair & accurate the information was. Our classes were really well run both from an information point of view, also from a getting to know each other POV. Unfortunately I was the cultural misfit in the group, but that became apparent much later.

Info on sleeping issues, particularly in the first few weeks. Maybe sharing some of the information on bf and co-sleeping put together by Unicef, or by Helen Ball at the Sleep Lab in Durham.

Better info on bf - it would have been useful to know about cluster feeding, growth spurts and nursing strikes in particular. All my group started bf and lots nearly started ff at 6 weeks when we hit the spurt, and one girl switched to ff when her DD went on nursing strike because none of us knew what it was then. :(

I know the NCT do some post-birth classes, but really the first 3 months were about sheer survival so there was no chance of going to any then, and by the time you'd got that far, it didn't seem worth going to classes any more.

Hi Valium,

My experience sounds almost identical to flip's we also did a who would be in theatre for c-section role plaything, which in the end was very helpful as I wasn't frightened by the sheer number of people or the fact that there were paed's docs in theatre when I ended up with a crash section. If nct class hadn't told me there would be so many people I would have thought there must be something terribly wrong.

The only real difference with what flip said in my case is that we didn't really cover induction at all. I agree with her that more about going overdue would be helpful.

Our group has a visit from a reflexologist who gave a great pitch and told tales of her success. We virtually all signed up for treatments and all but one were overdue and ended up with sections!!! I am therefore a little against outsiders coming in with their own commercial agenda telling pregnant women what they want to hear and making a load of dosh by praying on our fears!! [not bitter and twisted honest emoticon!]

Oh and the bf sessions should be more about feeding than just bf, I know they need to promote breast is best but by ignoring the problems that a lot of women have and the fact that some just won't cope with bf, either physically or mentally, they just end up making mums who have tried their best feeling pants and like bad mothers for not bf.

Good luck with your projects xx

Our NHS class was really good. I wish they'd discouraged partners from coming to at least one of the classes though. Whilst I was glad my DH wanted to come and learn it all with me, there was no encouragement to get to know the other mums to be. Consequently I didn't know any new mums after DS was born.