The NCT are having a laugh aren't they???!!!!

[lubella]

I just applied for Ante Natal classes and the literature came thorough at £180 for a 2 day intensive course.

Before I sign up to these can someone out there honestly justify to me that they are worth it; I'm sure it said £100 on the leaflet I recieved as a member and I just feel like WTF??(&&&&!!?

I loved my nct classes and the people i met there but prob wouldn't have paid that much - I think ours was £80. If it were happening again now i certainly couldn't afford it.

Of course a lot of information is available on the internet, but how on earth does clicking on a website compare with discussing things, connecting and relating to people in a similar situation to yourself and actually having a trained specialist there to answer any questions you may have?

I agree that £180 sounds rather steep, but, if you have difficulty in meeting that sum, the NCT will consider reducing or even waiving the fee. They do not make a profit from the classes and the way the classes are run is far superior than anything you could obtain from the NHS. I've done both and, frankly, the NHS ones were a complete waste of time.

Was £50 when I did it 'bout 6 years ago. Can't say I was too impressed. Found myself sitting on the floor sorting out cut out pictures of baby stuff into 'essential' 'desirable' 'not needed'. errrrr - think I can work that one out for myself. Local hossie Parentcraft just as good. Sure they do lots of good things, just not for £180!!!!

I find that the NCT ladies are the type who are likely to wear aprons in the kitchen

Oh bollocks, MP. I can't remember ever having worn an apron - anywhere. Although, come to think of it, perhaps the bedroom might be the place to try it .... on dh..... hmm

For those of you who have some experience of the .....er.... smugness (wrong word perhaps?) of the NCT, you should have seen their faces when I told out Ante Natal group that I was planning to bottle feed!! It was priceless.

FWIW my experience was

1. with dd I did NHS classes (made no friends at all and the info to help with labour was totally useless.

1. With ds 3 years later did nct classes (not a 2 day course but a 10 week evening once a week course), classes were great (enabled me to labour without intervention and give birth to a 10lb whopper) and initially made friends but we later drifted apart a few months later(mind you I did move to America for 6 months so that didn't help).

In the end it depends on the area you live in, the hospital you attend, the person teaching the classes and the people attending, and finally what you want out of the classes.

As someone else said - the best advice you will get on parenting/labour etc is here (unfortunately I only discovered it when ds was almost 6months).

well I must admit to wearing an apron in the kitchen.

It stops my clothes getting spatters of lentil soup on them

I remember spending a most productive hour sequencing pictures of a babies expression during a feed. We were meant to learn that babies like food, I think.

i wear an apron in the kitchen, i am a member of the NCT. i sometimes have smooth hair... OMYGODWHATHAVEIBECOME...?

and i have BOOTS!
oh, the humanity...

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(I probably have boots somewhere...and the smooth hair is really only a problem on women who have just given birth, tbh)

I did them and they were barely any different from the hospital ones. I did it to make friends but really didn't haven anything in common with the people on it. They were very mostly very wealthy, materialistic, obessesed by certain popular routine based child care tomes and the nurseries their children would go to (childminders were way too common). SAHMs were very much loooked down on. They were very far away from the sterotypical image of the nct which I would have much prefered. I have met other people who I had more in common with who also did NCT classes so I feel I was just very unlucky.

Amd actually, technically, if you get right down to it...

I AM a member of the NCT. Its a long story...

I edited their newsletter for a year, even...

oh its all coming out now, isn't it

(the real problem with the NCT is this. All the kids are the same age. This means no hand me downs.)

£180 is a bit steep, but may include membership? It may be that the branch isn't making much off that. We have a max of 8 couples per course. We had hall rental at £140 per course, which was cheap, really. And then the teachers cost a minimum of £25 per hour. And then, you have to pay a % of your takings to head office. It all adds up.

Our branch charges £140 for a two-day, 12-hour intensive with separate 2-hour breastfeeding course, no membership involved. We make quite a bit of money on it, tbh, but it subsidizes all our other branch activities (e.g. newsletter). We don't pay any hall rental atm, otherwise we probably wouldn't make anything.

And yes, if you say you have financial issues, we can (and do!) charge less.

We also do a one-day, 8-hour intensive at £100. Nobody wants it, though, they all want the two-day.

We probably should lower how much we charge for classes, but demand is so so so high (I had a place come free recently, and had such demand for it, I did a draw between 8 couples!), and we can hopefully start training a new teacher or two soon with the money, so I can stop saying "we have no places for you" to everyone who gets in touch.

i am delighted to report that with no exceptions whatsoever, all my NCT friends looked like shit after the birth of their babies.

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never did it

never wanted to

have friends who did and they got friends out of it

but I did the NHS run groups and got a great bunch of new mums

i went to the nct classes. pile of shite. nothing i couldnt have learnt on the nhs. full of ppl alot older then me, all giving up work once the baby arrives, all older mums which a diff outlook. im sure every group is diff. but i found the whole experience nasty.

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That was MY thread. It was REALLY good.

It was circulated among many NCT groups and raised a little bit of a stir.

My argument was that the NCT HAS outlived it's usefulness, because it's campaigning (for non-medicated vaginal birth) and it's education roles overlap too much. Therefore the 'graduates' of its classes end up absorbing the NCT's jingoistic 'natural birth' (meaning vaginal with no anasthetic) ethic and the entire birth-moral-hierachy - which is a terrible message to give first-time mums, who are bound to end up (in the main) with a birth experience that they feel guilty/responsible/bad about.

I'm near the end of an 8 week course that cost about £75. Our local NHS ones have terrible reputations and the women at my classes who've been to both have said how much better the NCT ones are.........one had 36 people on one course apparently (at the hospital!).

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sorry