NCT antenatal courses - are they worth it!?!

[Greenfairybump]

My partner and I are expecting our first baby at the end of May/early June and I have found an ante-natal course through NCT which is £150. I've heard mixed things about these courses? We're both young and trying to be sensible with money but we want to do it if they're worth it??
Help!

I posted on this thread back in Jan - we've now done our NCT course and it was excellent. We had a reduced rate (£150 instead of £300 as we're poor students) and it was worth every penny.

Excellent teacher and met six lovely couples. Now that all the women from the class are on maternity leave, we've started meeting for coffee and they're already a great support network.

So, I'm a fan - but I think it does depend on whether you have a nice teacher, and whether the other couples are nice.

Hospital antenatal classes are great too, very informative and free. But not as easy to meet people in them.

we did weekend nct course which was fantastic - involved both partners, and was small at only 8 couples
in contrast we had 1 hour of nhs (leicestershire) which is the new gov provision being phased in... really is 1 hour worth it??
it made me and DH think about what we wanted from birth far more, and covered everything from home birth to c section in detail
interestingly i found the nhs breast feeding bit more millitant than nct which suprised me
there was also an interesting mix of ages - nct were 21-40's, nhs Im guessing i was oldest mum at 29, which doesnt matter but may effect some peoples preferences

I did the regular NHS classes with my first when we still lived in the UK. The class was big (about 20 women - morning course, partners welcome but only a few attended in the mornings, then one evening aimed at men attending too). My husband would have hated to be dragged along every week and I knew that in advance and wasn't about to force it on him!

I made a group of new friends through the course (not the entire group of 20 or so but a group of 8 of us made a concious effort to keep in touch and start meeting up socially once our maternity leave started), and for my daughter's first 18 months we spent loads of time together. We used to have a meet up each week with all 8 of us plus others of us would meet up in 2s and 3s on other days too - all of us but one were first timers who knew few other people with small children so we were all glad to find a group of friends with babies the same age. We moved abroad when DC1 was 19 months but are still in touch occasionally and I know most of the group still meet up.

So the free NHS can be whatever you make of it IMO - I did it for the contacts more than the contents as, as somebody else said, you can learn just as much from a book in terms of "facts". Also the possibility of an emergency c-section was only very briefly mentioned, even though it there was a 25% c-section rate in the area - I ended up with an emergency section and was totally unprepared for that.

We have just started our NCT classes and we are, so far, really enjoying them. Yes they're costly but I can see the benefits. As someone earlier mentioned it means your OH can get involved and has to take note of what's about to happen (mine will not read anything about it!). The classes have been fun, interactive and really informative. The teacher, will covering the usual stuff, is tailor making the course content to suit us and our needs/worries which I think is great. We were worried about being the youngest couple there and we are but not by alot. It also seems the money you pay goes beyond the actual classes. Our NCT teacher has been in regular email contact and seems like great support if ever you need it. The other couples are lovely and I can see us becoming good friends over the next few weeks. I would recommend them highly.