Apprehensive about this NCT situation...

[JewelleryBox]

I’m in a same sex relationship and my DW is carrying our baby. I’d like to join a group like NCT or Baby and Bump type group but have a few anxieties:

Is it very gendered? ie do the ‘dads’ have their own sessions? If so I assume these would be about being a supportive birth partner so I’d be ok to go to these?

When the group WhatsApp is set up is there one for ‘mums’ and one for ‘dads’? And if so where do I go!

Much later on when there are meet ups would you have found it odd that I’m there instead of my DW? (I’ll be taking the vast majority of the maternity/shared parental leave and my DW said she’s interested in the groups for the classes rather than the social aspect whereas I also like the idea of the social support.)

Blimey, I gave birth in September and I’d MUCH rather have gone to the pub from the off, not sit around and discuss vaginal trauma with a group of other women I’d only just met

I'm doing NCT classes with my partner. (We're a female and male couple, but anyway...) Both the mother's and their partners attend the same in-person sessions, and are part of the same whatsapp group. The only time we have different experiences there is when the course leader splits us up into a mothers group and a partners group - Sometimes the partners leave the room and they discuss how they can support the mothers through the stage being discussed - I.e when discussing the challenges of breastfeeding, mothers might discuss how to deal with sore nipples, while the partners talk about how to emotionally and physically provide support through a difficult time.

I did bump and baby. I don't recall it being very gendered. Quite a few of the dads took longer paternity leave and would join the rest of the group for coffee / park etc. We mixed quite a lot as a big group socially as well.

WhatsApp groups were set up informally but I think you could join whichever one you wanted.

At NCT classes I did we were split into 'mums' and 'dads' groups for some of the exercises, but the purpose wasn't to group us by those titles, but to reflect that the pregnant woman and her birthing partner have different roles to play. In our case the instructor referred to these groups as the mums/the dads as we were all opposite sex partnerships, but essentially it was driven by are you the pregnant partner or the person who on the day will be supporting the pregnant partner.

Other than that, the classes ran on the assumption that both partners would be hands on parents, but recognising that the pregnant partner will be the one giving birth, potentially breast-feeding, at risk of PND etc.