What did you learn at NCT?

[StrawberryQuik]

DH and I have our first NCT class in 2 weeks and both DM and MIL have asked what we'll be learning - tbh I have no idea, I mainly joined in the hope of making some mum friends

DM was in another country when she had me and learnt a lot about breathing and visualising during labour but nothing about baby are. MIL did the NHS ones and learnt how to give the baby baths. - both sound pretty useful so hopefully there'll be some of that.

I liked the way they broke down each stage of labour and talked about different types of labour, pain relief, what points pain can really ramp up, what to expect from an induction and also a c section. Very very pro breastfeeding, but did go through best techniques for bottle feeding. At the start of the course our NCT lady asked us to write down what we wanted to focus on and talk about, she tailored the course to suit us. I was lucky in that everyone on course was lovely and eight months on we meet up weekly :)

My classes were great, no competitive parents and no brain washing or biased views. I think NCT have changed a bit over the last few years from what I hear and are more open minded and less preachy than perhaps some people may have experienced if they did the classes years ago. I guess a lot of it will entirely depend on the class leader. Ours was fantastic though. It really helped us to mentally prepare for birth and I think especially useful for my OH who otherwise possibly wouldn't have read up on and learned key info. A big focus was on how to stay calm and why this was important and about supporting the mother. Lots of practical advice too on what to pack, medication, breast feeding etc. All very non biased. Much better than our NHS classes and everyone was encouraged to get to know each other through group exercises so no cliques formed in our group and everyone got on well

Just take it all with a pinch of salt and you'll enjoy it. We went on to break a lot of the 'rules' - the temperature they thought the baby's bath should be seemed freezing to us!

But it's useful if you haven't had much time to read up on stuff. The best bit by far is the people you meet - seven out of eight of us girls are in regular contact and we've had nights out, spa days and a weekend in London. And the very best thing is our babies were born so close together that many of them go through the same phases at exactly the same time so it makes you feel a lot better about what is normal. If you get a good group set up a Facebook messenger group - invaluable for urgent messaging at 3am to see who is still up and has experienced that particular drama before...

I learned not be scared, and that fear was a big contributor to pain and failure to progress in labour.

I learned to stay upright for as long as possible during labour - you need all the help from gravity as you can get!

Lots of strategies for dealing with pain.

Plenty of detail about the pros and cons of CS, induction, pain relief etc so I could make an informed choice (this is so important).

We also had an amazing three hours with a BF counsellor, to whom I owe a massive debt, as her advice and ongoing support helped me to BF successfully.

And I made several great friends, who I still see 17 years later.

I learnt that just because you have a baby the same age, this does not create a great friendship circle.

I learnt that some people will push breastfeeding at all costs (not the lovely NCT woman but other mums).

I learnt that the Alpha Girl at school turns into Alpha Woman at work and then Alpha Mum.

I learnt some good basic tips about dressing baby. That a c section was nowt to be scared of.

That men can lactate?!
Made fantastic friends who were an invaluable support in the early days.

I liked the people I met there but not the course particularly. The BF class was useless. Basically hold a baby at your boob like this and it'll work. No formula advice. A seemingly helpful with an undertone of judging what happens when you have a c- section bit.

When I left I was all ready to have a home birth until I needed to be induced and have an epidural! Felt very disappointed with that as I was wanting to stay upright, move, and I got so frightened about the 'cascade of intervention' they go on about. But it all turned out fine. I think they need to be a bit more impartial really.

Breastfeeding is 'natural', we have only internalised the idea that it's difficult because we've bought into formula marketing, demonstrated by a lot of blurry videos of newborns scooting up their mothers' bodies to the nipple. The BF instructor person was based on rural Devon, and had for some reason been prevailed upon to come to London for a day to teach that part (it was a weekend course) when someone else dropped out, so we never saw her again.

Also, any pain relief leads to A Cascade of Intervention. Which is a Bad Thing. Who was in the room for a C-section was illustrated with Lego figurines. The anaesthetist was wearing a Red Indian headdress.

The whole NCT experience was a baffling load of ill-founded 'natural birth' stuff with a side-order of old hippie, the teacher was shy, stilted and unable to look anyone in the eye - she knitted a stripey knee-sock the whole time -- as well as being radically anti-intervention, and the one thing that we all agreed on after the babies had arrived was that we all thought the course was crap.

It turned out everyone had done it to make 'mummy friends', but unsurprisingly, given that all we had in common was babies of the same age, we didn't really gel and drifted apart almost immediately.

Maybe you'll have better luck, OP.

This was in 2012, by the way.

We had our last class last night, and DH and I both thought it was well-worth the money. I was expecting a bit of an agenda, but the NCT lady was lovely and completely non-judgemental about things like bottle feeding and C-sections (which I'd been told that NCT are a bit funny about). She kept hammering home that the most important thing is a healthy baby and a healthy mum, and that no-one's going to know how the baby came into the world or how it's being fed.

We had three sets of parents and babies from a previous group join us last night, so it was great to get their stories - which covered a six hour labour, induction, epidurals, forceps, an EMCS and bottle feeding (not all the same person!).

From a practical point of view, no question was a silly question, and it helped that we all started out looking like rabbits in the headlights. We covered everything from:

Stages of labour
Pain relief -pro's and cons of each one, don't rule anything out
What babies actually look like when they're born - the various husbands all looked quite shocked when presented with some of the photos lol!
The role of hormones - oxytocin, adrenaline, etc
When to phone midwife and labour ward, and when to go in
How to travel in the car (back seat when in labour - who knew?!)
C-sections - when, how, why, after-care
What happens to your body after birth, what's normal / what's not
Baby care - clothing, bathing, sleeping, travelling, feeding options

Our group was quite disparate (we were definitely the oldest there), and it took us a little while to start bonding, but we're now all set up on WhatsApp, and it was fun. We also did some exercises/discussions, with men and women separated, and I think the men found that really helpful as there was no 'pressure' to know the answers, and they could really talk things through.

We weren't at all static, so we might sit in a circle, then get up and move into other groups, pair up to practice labour positions, be split up to work through some cards or photos - so the time passed really quickly. Our group was in Newbury, and I'd really highly recommend it. I feel loads more confident, and I'm just pulling together a list of questions for when I see the consultant this afternoon, which I wouldn't have know to ask previously.

The only thing I remember about ours is the Lego figurines demonstrating the set up for a CS (which must be something they teach them in NCT training!) and the fact that one of the expectant fathers, a tweedy minor toff type, threw up at a photograph of a placenta. Which admittedly looked like a bloody cauliflower...

It certainly didn't teach me anything about labour or baby care that wasn't either common sense or something I'd already read about, or covered in the free NHS courses at the hospital. Its appeal, such as it is, is as a middle-class social group for new mothers, and as none of us much liked each other on our course, it didn't really work on those grounds either!

I think it's probably luck of the draw, but I definitely got a shitty draw.

I didn't really gel with any of the other parents there. Nice people but I didn't find any of them very open to anything more than superficial friendship.

The woman holding the classes was something else though. She did go over some basics...How to juggle housework around the demands of a new born, what a healthy poo looks like and when to worry, different birthing positions, skin to skin, breast feeding, etc.

But she focused mainly on how in her opinion, giving birth wouldn't hurt providing we had the right mind set. She gave us loads of accounts of mothers experiencing contractions as sound rather than pain and loads more of mothers who were so incredibly proud that they'd given birth without pain relief. She spent very little time talking about pain relief, assisted birth and C sections. Anything she did volunteer about these was only given on request. She arranged a date to see us all (couples and babies) after the births, then didn't bother turning up.

I actually learned a lot and would highly recommend. The class we did on labour positions and breathing was especially helpful. But I echo other comments on bf. They wouldn't entertain discussions on formula feeding so I was a bit panicked about what would happen if bf didn't go well. Thankfully it did and I was also the only person in my group who had a straight forward birth - the others felt a bit unprepared when they encountered problems in the birth as they kind of make out in the classes that you just 'breathe' the baby out...

But she focused mainly on how in her opinion, giving birth wouldn't hurt providing we had the right mind set. She gave us loads of accounts of mothers experiencing contractions as sound rather than pain and loads more of mothers who were so incredibly proud that they'd given birth without pain relief. She spent very little time talking about pain relief, assisted birth and C sections. Anything she did volunteer about these was only given on request. She arranged a date to see us all (couples and babies) after the births, then didn't bother turning up.

Elderly, this wasn't in North London, by any chance, was it? Because she sounds identical to my NCT teacher, who got visibly cross when we brought up epidurals or CSs. (Only we actually disinvited her from the subsequent gathering, because the vast majority of our group (clearly with the 'wrong mindset') had had birth interventions, and the final straw was when the teacher emailed asking exactly 'how' each person's birth had been, clearly looking for 'it doesn't hurt if you have the right mindset' anecdotes.)

I do agree it's the luck of the draw, and I also got a crappy draw in terms of an inept teacher and a group that turned out not to like one another much, but the whole experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm in the north west Pitted...It's a crying shame there's 2 of them though! I also went on to have a very traumatic birth that I was wholly unprepared for...It's probably a good job she didn't turn up to the follow up meeting as I was annoyed enough at her to tell her what I thought. Wouldn't have gone down well!

My Nct class was VERY biased which surprised me. I didn't realise this when we signed up. No reference at all to formula feeding which I thought was out of order, and lots of talk about having no pain relief. Not realistic in my view. I got on ok with the rest of the class, but it did feel a bit judgey- eg who can breastfeed for longest, absolutely no alcohol ever when breastfeeding etc etc. Maybe that's just my experience

I made a group of friends I still have today (9 years on) and my son has a group of 8 people he's known since birth. I feel sad that my second son doesn't have that.

I would caution you about this though: I totally bought into the "avoid a c section at all costs so don't choose too much pain relief as you won't feel to push, etc." the whole thing about pain relief and interventions leading to c sections pisses me off. I went with no pain relief and ended up with a 4th degree tear (tried to push too fast). I believe if I'd had an epidural, I'd have been calmer and not ridiculously exhausted from 32 odd hours of contractions.

Re the anti CS thing: all I can say is hahahaha. Clearly these women have never had to have one, and have therefore no empathy for the women who have.

I have no issues with having had one. In my case I was late 30s, 40+15, zero signs of labour, 4 pessaries and several painful sweeps and no bugger could find my cervix. Given a friend had been through stillbirth, and the only alternative was to try a drip and ARM for a cervix the medics couldn't reach I think I would have been nuts to opt for anything else. But even in less extreme cases who seriously thinks there's moral high ground worth claiming because one person's fanjo worked different to another's?

Rant over!

LaPharisienne Tue 16-Feb-16 16:48:02 - SE London

Big group of mostly older Alpha Mums, myself included. The NCT lady was very nice, and as a group post natally we all muddled along with the occasional school girl like flouncing and "splits" between bickering mums which made life awkward for those of us who couldn't be arsed with it all .

I've been quite negative, I hoped to have lifelong friends and it was not to be for me at any rate. It was worth the money in some respects more so retrospect as it gave DH and I actual time to consider and discuss things properly. I'd done all the reading and was becoming pretty angry at the uninformed yet opinionated partner

I ended up with a C section so the drilling on pain relief and what their side effects were very useful as DH had retained it all and I couldnt remember a thing after 48 hours of labour. Our lovely NCT lady did also point out how many people were likely to be in the room at a C-Section and so not to assume death of mother and child was imminent! I think there were at least 4 excluding DH and I, at my vbac a few years later.

Competitive parenting
This.

And some stuff about breathing techniques and birth positions. Breastfeeding. Taking care of newborns like bathing, changing, etc.

It's useful. Depending on your income, it might be worth it or not.

Ours covered C-section. Two of the mums and dads were junior doctor, so we got quite in depth information about it!

I did succeed in breathing both babies out without any pain relief. I think it's more down to silent labour however . I only get contractions once every 5 min even towards the end. I tried gas and air with DD2, but it's worse than just normal breathing without the silly mask.

Practical stuff on a wide range of topics - pain relief options, c-sections, life with a new born (nappy changing, washing, taking care of, how many blankets you need), stages of labour. A whole session on feeding, including formula. Lots of info about local services. Options/preferences for birth.

The teacher had a rough plan but also asked us what we wanted to know at the start and incorporated that as well. Non judgey, very pro pain relief and was really informative.

Plus we made 5 good friends from our classmates, plus adopted two extras (one from the group before and one from the group after whose own groups didn't gel). The big kids are turning 9 and we still have a joint party for all 17 of them (all but 1 sibling also arrived within the same 6 week period), see each other weekly at least, have en masse trips to the cinema / park / days out, are each others babysitters / holiday clubs / emergency contacts.

[By implication] Who spent the most money on a pram and the merits/demerits of all the most expensive models available on the market.

TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams thank you for replying - I feared as much based on the often heinous conversations in my local (SE London) cafes...

I am not going to local NCT classes only because of dates/times of sessions but quite relieved following your post as this was exactly what I was worried about!

LaPharisienne

Honestly - I'd avoid it if that sort of thing makes you really socially anxious. If it doesn't or you are the sort of person who is quite happy to nod and smile and take the best of the advice / experience given then it can be very useful and often a lot of fun to have a group of new mums to hang out with. First time motherhood can be very lonely sometimes so if you do decide to give it a swerve, I would still consider joining the NCT to go to local meet ups though a membership is often not compulsory. Look for Facebook groups.

In London particularly the local population is so transient it's not at all unusual to meet new mums who didn't do the course in your area or did the evening one, while you did the weekend crash course. The wider NCT group are also often mums with 2 or more children and v friendly and approachable. In short, the wider your circle the easier it is to find someone you like to hang out with.

Re the heinous conversations it's a rather odd period where you are essentially making new friends as an adult in a situation where from the outset at least the only thing you have in common is a small child? In any other social setting you'd all be there because you liked the sport/band/cocktails. So initial conversations tend to focus heavily on the elements that you know you will all have common ground on with this short person who has just turned your life upside down. Thankfully most people don't tend to bore for England on the subject of their pram. Funnily enough the guys tend to go there more discussing the merits of how collapsible it is etc in the manner of Top Gear !