Does anyone think their NCT class is really not bonding?

[Saymyname]

Hi there,

We're halfway through our NCT class and I have to say I really don't think I/we've gelled with anyone else in the group. I don't think anyone else has bonded either though, so it's not a sort of cliquey left-out feeling.

I just think we're a real bunch of misfits, very, very different from each other. I know none of that's supposed to matter because having same-age children is what bonds you. But, I'm wondering if that is really likely to happen.

Did anyone else feel like this early on and go on to end up great mates?

I agree with meep (having been in her NCT group!). Our group was a total salvation for me and i can genuinely say i really like all of the five other mum's and am pleased to be friends with all of them. It has worked out much better than i expected! Maybe we were just really lucky?

I am constantly surprised also at how fond i have become of their babies - i have seen most of them at least once a week for the last year and watched them grow and watched their little personalities develop - it has been great.

So for me it has been a totally positve experience. Pregnancy changes you, but motherhood changes you even more (IME anyway, as i would never have imagined that 11 months on i would still be BFing and seriously considering being a SAHM instead of being hard-nosed career bird!). It is so important to make friends who you can turn to in those early days and you never know who you will end up being close friends with!

we didn't really bond longterm. only 4 couples. we women met up twice once the babies were born but then it fizzled out as we are in london and needed a car drive to reach each other. think everyone just found local walking distance things to do instead. its a shame i always thought as i'd too had misty eyed visions of friends for life etc but its true, just because you have a baby the same age, doesn't automatically mean you'll be great friends.

should add, i did and have found loads of local groups to go to and had a fab first year before i went back to work recently.

Stick with it. We were a very small (5)and disparate group and I was a lot younger than the others but now I see the two other SAHMs from the group almost every day and the WOHMs whenever they are free. Our partnes never really hit it off and so we don't see each other at weekends ut we're planning to change that!

Our children were all September babies and as they approach 2 I can really see them benefiting fron each other's company. Plus, three of us our pregnanct again all within months of each other!

I think it helped that the 2 SAHMs are similar to me in that they have very little family support close by. We were forced to rely on each other pretty early on for things like keeping an eye on the children.

We did have wildly different ideas about baby rearing but I think that's par for the course. We seem to be converging on toddler rearing though!!

I'm not great friends with any of mine 18 months on but we do meet up every week and they are all lovely. I really didn't enjoy it when DS was little but kept going for his sake. I suppose I have the luxury of long-term friends at work so I'm not too bothered about making deep and meaningful NCT friendships.

When I had ds1 our class 'clicked' pretty quickly, one girl took phone numbers and arranged coffee at her house when the babies were about 3 weeks old which started weekly meet ups, mainly at each others houses. We are all still friends 5 years later.

I went again when I was expecting dd and it was completely the opposite, even at the end of the 8 weeks no one really spoke to any one else. No one made an effort to arrange get togethers so all went our separate ways and I've never seen any of them again.

I think it really depends on the group and having someone with the guts to suggest taking phone numbers and arranging the first post natal meet up. Once you've done it then people tend to offer to host the next one and pretty soon you're good friends. The ones who genuinely don't fit in or don't like you will just fade out of it after a while.

No not really, we did meet up for a while afterwards but I don't think I really fitted in with the rest of them Three of them still meet up but I've been very purposefully left out which I found horrible.

Very disappionted TBH was like being back at school and not being included. Never worked out why I got ostracised either. I'm afraid after v negative experiences I'm a bit anti NCT!

We had moved area two years before DS arrived and renovated a house, so really hadn't met many new friends, and was still relying on old friends visiting at weekends from long distances away.

So, tried NCT and national health antinatal classes. met some lovely people, but didn't really gel, and haven't stayed in touch beyond the first year with most of the about twenty people we met.

I met a couple of people through clinic sessions. I am in touch with three of the original people i met, we are supportive of each other, but don't have much in common and as other people have said DH has little in common with their DP.

I go to lots of events in the week such as swimming, playgroup, and occasionally a coffee morning, babygym. I speak to lots of people and actually this is turning out to be the best for me!

It allows me and DS freedom of time, and a friendly chat when we need it/are attending these activities.

Now DS is older I find coffee mornings restrictive, but for the first year they were really suppportive. DS has been invited to birthday parite, etc, nd his social life is developing, but we have met friends locally through other routes than children!

I got put in a NCT group with mums who were all due a month before me. They all started maternity leave earlier, had their babies earlier and have moved on. They tried to include me as much as possible but I feel totally left out, the next youngest baby to mine is 5 weeks older... Feel v let down by NCT as the whole point for me was to meet other mums...

My NCT group are all due about 6 weeks before me as well, due to late booking on my part - it was the only place available. But I must have been lucky as we've all clicked quite well. Our (fantastic, lovely) teacher kind of arranged the first meet up, which was a good idea as it took the pressure off any of us, and since then we've been meeting once a week without any feeling of forcedness.

Obviously this may change once the babies start arriving and so forth, but the other mums-to-be are all so laidback that I can't imagine they'd bother making the effort to meet up if they didn't want to. I'm looking forward to meeting their babies, hearing their birth stories and helping them out before mine is due to arrive; I feel quite fortunate to be able to get some pre-experience, iyswim.

I meet up with my NCT group every week or so and we go out every so often without the babies. (Our babies are 16 months now)
I get on with them but I have often said to DH that I'm not sure if we had met under different circumstances whether we would be friends.
The Dads also went out but it didn't go as well, one guy said nothing and two others checked thier blackberries every 5 minutes. We ladies have nenever spoken about it
I tried the other week to get people round at the weekend but everyone left around 1.30pm to get their babies off to sleep for a nap!

I had an NCT of 8 couples and we all had baby girls within a month of each other. A year on we still see one another every week for coffee. I guess we were lucky. I think you bond more once the babies are born and you are all in the same boat. Especially when husbands go back to work and you need a friend to sit and stare at your small people with!

peacelily, that was my experience, too! Three of the mums out of seven got very friendly very quickly and the rest of us were not included in their little outings and coffee mornings. TBH, although I felt a bit cross about it to start with (I do think if we'd all stuck together for a bit longer, we might have found some common ground), I'm not sorry now. I bumped into one of those three mums in the supermarket this morning and was frankly appalled to have to make conversation with her. Out of the seven, there were two mothers who I think I might have liked if I'd met them elsewhere but one of them was one of the group of three and I probably didn't make enough of an effort to keep in touch with the other. The rest of them just weren't my sort of people, really. Having said that, we did all meet up at least once every couple of weeks for about six months or so and it was good to have somewhere to go and people to see, even if sometimes I used to think 'I really can't be arsed, I want to watch crap telly in my pyjamas and drink a lot of tea and lie on the floor with my baby and chat to her'. Possibly I was just too lazy to benefit from the NCT thing.

Actually, another thing that made it hard was that all of them had their babies in a pretty strict routine from day 1 and they were nearly all prepared to take a bottle, whether of EBM or formula. I pretty much let my daughter lead the way on everything for the first year and there was no way she was having a bottle or being put to bed by her dad. So the others (or some of them, anyway) were able to meet up for a drink in the evenings now and then and have, you know, adult conversations and stuff. Maybe if I'd done that kind of thing with them, I'd have liked them more or got to know them better. OTOH, maybe I'd have just thought 'I want to stay at home in my pyjamas and not go out and eat takeaway in front of the television'. Hmmm. It's a tough one.

Our group got on during the classes, but we weren't about to add eachother to our Christmas card list! After we'd given birth, however, there was an amazing transformation. We'd meet at least once a week and I can honestly say that I don't know how I'd have coped during the first six months without them. You can't underestimate the support you get from talking to people in exactly the same boat as you....

Just like so many others, I remember looking round at the other people in our NCT class and thought absolutely not will I be friends with any of these. But totally the opposite ... my dh used to drag everyone to the pub after the class and that helped and then we started meeting up when they finished. We then met up A LOT (at least once a week) when the babies were born and now, 5 and a half years later, I would say I am really good friends with 5 out of the other 7. The dhs also go out for nights out, as do we. And the children are all really good friends. It's really really nice knowing that you have all been through so much together.

Give it a chance ... it is different having friends who have babies exactly the same age as yours ...

I don't know whether we were lucky but we have a great class (ten of us), varied ages and lifestyles but we still meet up now nearly 18 months later once a week for a coffee and once a month for a night out. FOr us though, we were a women only class (it wasn't stipulated this way, it just so happened that OH's werent that interested in going!) and so i think that helped us bond in the orignal classes. Most have either gone back to work full or part time but still keep in contact and meet when they can. There are two or three I am more friendly with and see more socially than the others (aerobic class, cinema, pizza and wine nights) but all in all these girls kept me sane in the first "six week post birth blur" which I am extremely grateful for!

Do look up surestart, it was originally for people in deprived areas but now everyone is welcome. I have met a couple of lovely girls from there and TBH there are mums there from all walks of life IYSWIM, also they are cheap - the group i go to costs £1 some sessions they have are free...

Didn't work for me. For some reason, none of us actually lived near each other (not like others in my area where they all lived just streets apart - we were bus rides away from each other). Also we were all just quite different - hard to describe but all different ages, different jobs, lived in different areas.

Anyway, none of us stayed in touch - we didn't even do the meet-up thing just after the babies were born. The truth is, no one - including me - made the effort.

It took me a long time to make new friends in my area - I'm talking at least a year - and I was v. jealous of others who had good experiences.

my story sounds similar to lots whilst doing classes and still busy with work and 'normal' friends didnt really get that excited about everyone. we met up for lunch after class and then couple of times a week after that and still do now 2 yrs later.i loved texting them all in the middle of the night when up breastfeeding.2 girls didnt really get involved but we still invite them to everything. a couple of the girls did nhs classes as well so we have amalgamated into a lovely group and support each other hugely. i feel really lucky and think that i am a much happier mum for it.i have made lots of cool friends thru baby signing and swimming and music though so think it cant always work out. at the beginning there were a couple of us who made a huge effort to get everyone involved though so maybe you need to do that?

i love the fact that i now have friends who i would never have met otherwise and feel richer for it.

oh sorry forgot to say i also really love seeing my nct friends children grow up, my daughter is so happy meeting the friends she has known her whole life and most of them are having 2nd babiues now and it just feels as if the family is growing!

I was really disappointed with my class - I didn't think we were that different but noone made the effort including the teacher to arrange a catch up - we eventually met once when the last baby was a month but mine was already 3 months. We only had 3 sessions and hubbies were included so I think it's a bit harder to bond over a short period when you already have your other half there. A friend of mine did NCT in a different area, her ante-natal course was over 6 or 8 sessions and the girls really bonded and meet up every week even before the babies started arriving - also, like her, most were relatively new to the area and were looking to make friends whereas I think my group all came from the area and were there for the info rather than the friendship.

I still see as many of our 7 (one girl left us) week in and week out and we are nearly 2 years on. Everyone is different so not too many personality clashes but above all everyone is pretty normal so there isn't one too dominant personality type who pisses everyone off or whom we bitch about behind their backs (maybe that's me then !) . We even manage the odd night out. Some have gone back to work and some are on second babies but we still see who we can, week on and week off - We all have other friends who we see and also I suppose have got used to our own company with our dc's but for whatever reason it's worked. I know people who haven't had that experience though - the group just didn't gel. I suppose that's the way it works sometimes. The men don't meet up though - my dh pretty much decided he had nothing in common with them and really can't be bothered - a few of them work quite long hours so I think we sort of look in each other as our "through the week" friends and don't tend to socialise with them at weekends. That seems to be "old friends/ family/ people who work in the week" time.

When DD was born I went to a weekly postnatal group. I didn't make any lifelong friendships there but enjoyed everyone's company at the time and got a lot of support out of it. We visited each other and some of us went to other groups together - music and swimming, depending on interests. The feeling I had was not so much that I was making new friends but new colleagues - perhaps because we wouldn't have sought each other out at evenings and weekends, perhaps because there was a kind of looser-knit comradeship about it all - perhaps because we were supporting each other through a more than full time job!

yep, we still meet weekly and our 'babies' are about to start having their 4th birthdays

it took time for bonds to really form though. this was well after classes had finished.

Well, my NCT group are people that I just have nothing in common with. They are nice people but our children are our only common link.

However, we'd been meeting for nearly three years and I have to say, I found meeting them every week really grounded me when I was feeling so very lost as a new parent. I'd recommend persevering with your group, Saymyname, for that sole reason.

Then, one of them yelled at DS for peeling a sticker of her DS's favourite toy. We don't see her anymore but we do see the others.

I wouldn't expect great mates but hopefully you can expect support and fun and chat. As a new mum, these small things are really really important and help stop you feeling isolated.

Mine didn't at all - we met about 5-6 times after and it was worth doing at the time but I felt when we met that we weren't on the same wavelength.
I did meet a great group through NCT postnatal and have found that brilliant. You'll find your niche somewhere - you can't rely on the antenatal but get out there to various groups after the baby comes and you will meet some like-minded people.