Experience with NCT classes?

[KellyJellyfish]

Anyone done these? Did you find them useful or not? I think I’d like to sign up but my partner thinks they won’t tell us anything we can’t find out ourselves online (personally I think he just doesn’t want to give up a month of Thursday evenings),

they’re £300 so I’d only book if really worth it, what’s your experience been?

I have booked one, but not been yet! Interested to here the responses you get.

I mainly booked on for the social side/meeting other soon to be new mums in the area. I have a couple of friends who have done NCT classes and have staying in touch with people from their course.

But yes I agree it is expensive, hoping it’s going to be worth it!

I went to something very similar and found the classes quite intense, especially the giving birth ones! Half the stuff you don't need to know because it might not happen. It's important to be informed but I found it all too much.

Everyone will say it's great for meeting people which it is but I don't think it's worth £300. You can meet people on other forums and groups.

Classes like these aren't just for the information. They allow you to have a network of people who are going through the same as you at the same time- people to spend mat leave with, panic over things to etc. From that POV massively worth doing if you can afford them!

I'm still filled with resentment about the nct classes I had in my first pregnancy because they brainwashed me that all birth interventions would feel like failure and a c section most of all. (I'm sure you can guess how that turned out.)

There was only one session on baby feeding and it wasn't as helpful as this fab breastfeeding book I got.

They're helpful for making mum friends but we've all lost touch now, 3y later.

Basically, I don't recommend it.

I was really glad I did it. If you go for the social element, it's pot luck if you'll get a good group or not, but lovely to have others going through it all with you that you can WhatsApp at 3am when you're all awake!

For the info - it was great. I felt way more prepared and for what was to come too. I'd recommend.

I did NCT classes many moons ago. Met some lovely people and made lifelong friendships with 2 highly excellent women. The NCT teacher was a bit knit-your-own-yoghourt but a very nice woman who had lots of time for her group.

One of the dads in the group announced that he believed his role was to refuse all pain relief / drugs on behalf of his wife. He would be "strong" even if she was weakening.

As you can imagine, the women in the group soon turned him into mincemeat by offering to shove a grapefruit up his arse and see if he needed pain relief.

I really enjoyed ours. Yes, you can find out all the information online, but i did not have the mental energy when heavily pregnant to do the reading and the research. Would your DP actually do that or are they just saying that as an excuse?

What i liked is that they didnt just cover birth. One of the sessions is on breastfeeding and one on looking after the baby (ie. Nappy changing, swaddling, settling, soothing etc). I had no experience of tiny babies before DC so I actually found that the most helpful.

Plus, I'm quite a shy person, so it was nice to meet some other people due with babies at the same time. I'm not the sort of person who could go to a baby group and just start talking to people (my worst nightmare in fact!)

So in terms of how useful you find it, it might depend on your personal experience with kids or feelings about how easy you would find it to make friends elsewhere?

This is my fear about them, I’m a very logical person, I don’t buy into the ‘hippie’ mentality when it comes to birth, I’m more than happy to accept pain relief and I’ve come to accept that due to complications (fibroids) my chance of having an unassisted delivery is low and I may even need a c-section. Similarly I see no point shaming mothers who can’t breastfeed, there’s nothing wrong with the bottle.

I like the idea of NCT for the social side and the practical information, but I’m prepared to take their viewpoints with a pinch of salt.

I would add: how things are slanted depends massively on your teacher. I didn't do NCT (I did an alternative) as some of their philosophies didn't work for me (eg if intervention was needed, I didn't want to be told it was a bad thing; that not breastfeeding for whatever reason is a failure; that "natural" is best- to me, all birth is natural, whether from the sun roof or vagina) but did an alternative.

Things about breastfeeding and pain relief were hugely helpful, and my husband managed to retain a lot of stuff that came in handy when things went a bit wrong.

Agree with others that the friendships may fizzle out- 4 years on, I am still friends with 2/8 couples- but for mat leave, it was great to have people to hang out with (and to go through the terrifying early days with).

I think it depends totally on the course leader. Ours was brilliantly balanced - talked about epidurals, c sections, bottle feeding + formula etc. I felt really prepared for most eventualities (except NICU, which was our experience in the end). However i know others have not had as positive an experience. Do you know anyone in your area that recently had a baby? You could always ask them if they did them and what the leader is like for your area?

I was really lucky with our group, we gelled and they are still some of my closest friends nearly three years on.

It’s true you can meet other people at baby groups and so on but what I did find was that people would often go with their NCT friends, making it harder to break into groups if you like. It’s not impossible, but I do think NCT just makes things like that a bit easier.

I found the classes focussed a lot more on natural birth, natural pain relief. We did a lot of hand massages, so DH practising pain relief hand massages because that would help me get through labour - I think when labour started the only words I said to him were “don’t fucking touch me”. So that was helpful.

I think it gives an idealised view. So breastfeeding they said it would be hard because of tongue tie and mastitis. They didn’t say we’d be readmitted to hospital, I’d be triple feeding which would take 2 hours, every 3 hours and then DD would have reflux so whatever milk I got down her would be thrown back up! So just be prepared it might be a bumpier ride than NCT make it out to be. I did feel a bit more confident about holding a baby, changing a baby etc though (you could Google that).

The benefit of NCT is the social side. I’m still in touch with my NCT group but it is luck of the draw as to whether your group works or not. My friend’s NCT group they haven’t stayed in touch with them, all the women in that group became SAHM and she was the only one to go back to work. She just found they were on different pages and she found it quite competitive. I really value my NCT group and it was so useful to have people going through the same things.

I think it really depends on the teacher and your group.

Mine was very fair - she gave us all the options, didn’t have any judgement on pain relief, c section etc. We also had a specific feeding session on how to BF, what a good latch looked like, but also how to wash bottles and prep formula.

I definitely didn’t feel like there was a judgemental “you have to do this all natural” vibe.

I am still good friends with NCT group now. They were a fantastic support network when we all had tiny babies.

I don’t agree that you can get the same friendships on forums and other baby groups. On an NCT course, everyone is starting from the exact same point.

Our course was fantastic and not a hint of pressure about natural birth or breastfeeding. We learnt loads about what was going to happen and how to look after the baby.

At first I didn't think I had much in common with the others but once the babies came along we were amazing support for each other and really gelled even tho we are all very different people. I'm really fond of them all and one of them is now a very close friend.

So for us it was brilliant.

The classes were a waste of time but the group I met were lovely and very useful in the first year. Be mindful they can push you towards certain choices and approaches that may not be right for you.

Tricky though isn’t it, because the opposite of an “idealised” view is a realistic or pessimistic one.

If they told you all about being readmitted to hospital, well 1) that doesn’t happen to most people and 2) they’d be accused of scaremongering

I think it’s hard to get absolutely all info and esp relevant info in to what is about 6 hours of meetings

I think you have the right idea here OP. The social side was valuable - not just the meet ups but the what’s app group and everyone going through the same thing together.

I went from being booked at the local stand alone midwife centre to a traumatic highly medicalised delivery and felt like I had not been adequately prepared at all for that scenario by the classes. It’s very much hypnobirthing/natural birth or nothing in my experience from NCT, so take that with a pinch of salt.

Congratulations on your pregnancy xx

The classes themselves aren't great but we have made fantastic friends and our mums whatapp group has been a life line to me on mat leave. For that reason alone they are definitely worth it

The social side was a dead loss for me. It makes me very sad to think about it, and how much more lonely it made my (COVID affected) maternity leave knowing I didn't actually manage to make any NCT friends. We still exchange pleasantries with the couples on our course when we see them in the pub/park but they were never friends and really not a very supportive group at all.

That being said I did learn a lot and I like the idea of a ready made network. If there were similar groups for subsequent babies then I would sign up in the hope it works out better next time!

So really it's all a gamble!

I had a very similar experience to @PurpleBananaSmoothie

I would say they were very focused on a textbook "natural" labour - which I know very few people had. Our instructor gave several horror stories about Pethedine so I was scared to take it. However, at the time, I was in a lot of pain and it was the only thing they could give as I wasn't dilated enough for the epidural.

It gave me unrealistic expectations as to what my labour would be like (i.e. contractions start, have warm bath, count etc) - mine was nothing like that, I had Hollywood waters breaking and contractions going straight to 3 in 10 (despite only being 1cm).

I would say I genuinely learnt more from watching One Born Every Minute than I did in NCT.

However, having the support network once they were born was invaluable. You are going through it at the same time as others. One of my friends put it as £300 to get 7 phone numbers - which is true. It was great in the early days when you need to get out of the house to go and meet for a walk/coffee etc. Unfortunately, our group isn't close anymore as lots of them moved away. However, I know other people that have super close NCT groups and they go on holiday together and everything! I just wouldn't put pressure on yourself that these are life long friends, becuase I think it really depends on the group.

Where I live there is a baby group for under 1s and it happened that there was a baby boom around the date my DS was born - I've made really close friends from that (to the point we hang out every week, had a joint birthday party for the kids, go out for meals/drinks), so I disagree with the PP that said you don't make friends at other baby groups (having said that the baby sensory class I did was so cliquey).

We went to a local one run by midwives, it was great (cost around £200
IIRC) Super informative and there was no snottiness about c sections or medicated births. We have been meeting up with the group socially which is fab. Hopefully there is something similar in your area?

Ours was quite well balanced, and I think it was worth it because although you can find out about all aspects of birth and looking after a baby online, you don't necessarily know what you don't know, so it's useful to have a structured syllabus that covers key aspects.

I found the NCT classes helpful, but the best part of it was meeting people who are going through the same experience. We all kept in touch for that first, intense year after birth, and that was invaluable. I found being a new mum very lonely (had PND and high-needs baby).

24 years later, I'm still close friends with one of the group. We've shared many milestones together.

How did you find this group? I’ve just been searching for local course son the NCT website, but it doesn’t give any info on who runs the course or a vibe for whether it’s going to be ‘hippie’ or not

What is wrong with a realistic view? Even if it is slightly pessimistic.

Out of 8 women in my group, 1 had the quick maternity unit delivery and home a few hours later. 2 had unassisted vaginal deliveries but on the delivery ward. 2 had assisted vaginal deliveries. 3 had EMCS. 2 had NICU stays. Of the 8 women, 3 were able to breastfeed past a couple of weeks, nobody had mastitis but 4 were triple feeding for a while. 3 babies were readmitted to hospital - one for low weight, one for jaundice and one for health issues that came to light after birth. Speaking to friends, they’ve also felt that NCT focussed on the idealised version.

Yes, you can’t cover everything but I felt they could spend less time on some of the natural pain relief techniques (which nobody I know used) and actually focus more on interventions and that feeding can be hard, not just down to tongue tie.