Need your help! Antenatal class improvement!

[squeckly]

Hi all,

I hope you all don't mind me posting on here. I am a final year student midwife and I am hoping to get a bit of advice and insight into what you all would like to see improved in antenatal classes.

I work in the South of England and I am trying to improve local parentcraft sessions in my area. Currently the scedule is based on the NHS requirements and can be quite boring for parents-to-be. I was just wondering what you think makes a good antenatal parent education session and anything that you thought would be covered, but wasn't. I believe the key to a good parent education session is guided one derived from parents wants and needs and to be provided in a way that is interesting and engaging. No suggestion is silly, I'd appreciate any feedback smile

Many thanks

Becky

You might want to talk to the Children's Centre in Billericay, Essex. They run antenatal classes which are a team effort from HVs, MWs, volunteers and the Children's centre staff. They are getting some excellent feedback from parents.

Thank you for your reply and recommendation to the Children's Centre, that is very useful to know

Best wishes :)

What I liked about ours that in the beginning of the session, in our little coffee table groups that we were in, she gave us paper for the group and had to write down all our concerns and queries on whatever topic we were doing, so at the end she made sure she had covered everything that everyone wanted to know.
As a first timer I was more worried about coming home after the birth as I'm the first child in our family to have so have absolutely no experience whatsoever, so felt that this could have been covered more.

My NHS antenatal class was 3 years ago, and was sadly a bit of let down. It was a huge group 90 min q & a where the 2 midwives discussed epidurals and c sections at great length, but missed out other vital info e.g. they recommended being active in labour & birth but didn't suggest any positions etc. One lady asked for advice about breathing through the pain of contractions and they said 'it's not essential info, if you needed to know the NHS would run a class on it, don't worry your midwife will coach you when you need to know' - I wondered about coping strategies at home first? Useful things they had were little pots with different coloured waters and what to do in each situation (however, they didn't have one that looked like pea soup though and that's what my waters were like!), and a model of baby, pelvis and placenta for a birth demonstration. Breast feeding was covered with a DVD, and samples of lansinoh cream were given out as good for dry skin on feet!