Antenatal classes essential or not?

[MatronicO6]

Currently 25 weeks and starting to get anxious about exit strategy. A few people have mentioned antenatal classes to me and I did look but all the in very limited in person courses were sold out and the rest are online. I'm pretty reluctant to spend a couple of hundred for an online course when I have first hand experience on how awkward, unengaging and challenging learning online is.

And now I'm panicking that I won't be prepared and will be completely hopeless in labour. Just wondering about thoughts ont antenatal classes. Are they essential?
Should I just try to engage in the online ones?
Are there other options to help prepare?

I did the Positive Birth Company one. To be honest I'm not convinced it helped me in any way, but I'm not quite a fair case as I think I was always going to have a fairly tricky birth. I did look up stats about various things (I work with statistics, so this is where I go naturally). That was helpful to me - in particular, while I wanted a vaginal birth, I was prepared for a C-section (as the probability of needing one is reasonably high) and so I wasn't too jarred or gutted when I did end up needing one.

I did also look up some of the stuff on the NHS website about looking after baby - found that was always very clear and reassuring.

I didn't attend any, there were none where I lived. I did however become a member of a Facebook group sprung from a mumsnet thread (all due same month/year), and it's been the best support I could've asked for. 7 years on, there's still 30 or 40 hard-core members, we meet up IRL when we can. All for free!

I did the local NHS classes and they were a massive waste of time.

I didn't bother for the same reason @allfurcoatnoknickers, I also figured all the stuff leading up to and including birth were out of my control and anything afterwards would be a case of winging it.

DC are now 15 and 9 and both fine desire me never having attended any classes!

Bump and baby club was a great course. I did it online due to lockdown last year. Met other mums and it was cheaper than NCT. It was all on zoom and had group chats during the sessions so wasn't a boring sit and listen lecture for 6 weeks.
The lady running it was a practicing midwife so gave useful and realistic info. Highly recommend if there's one in your area. Included first aid aswell.

@DoucheCanoe Same! My birth plan was also "get so off my tits on drugs I don't know or care what happens" and I thought that wouldn't go well at any kind of class .

DS and I both survived unscathed.

I never bothered

I'm not sure I will go to any classes myself. There is so much information available, I've become obsessive with reading up about all sorts of things. There's loads of nhs resources about looking after babies, breastfeeding etc. I am, though, hoping for a maternal request caesarean and so hopefully all the labour talk in classes wouldn't be needed for me. And I guess OP said they were thinking if that. I'd also worry that they would be patronising... I always cringe when someone refers to a pregnant woman as "Mum". I'd feel a real urge to make it clear that I'm not their mum! But I'm in the minority for that I guess

I found the pregnancy yoga class I did very helpful - especially the tea and chat with other mums to be there. You could look into something like that?