After you’ve taken out a second mortgage to buy a pram/carseat/baby bath system, one of those cribs that rocks your baby back to sleep so you don’t have to, and a really expensive, nice blanket that will last approximately 45 minutes before your bundle of joy ruins it in the worst way possible. But is it also worth investing in NCT?
NCT - the National Childbirth Trust - is a rite of passage for many a middle-class parent, both as a way of finding our more about what childbirth and having a baby actually entail, and as a handy opportunity to make friends in your local area who are having babies at the same time. But is it worth it? As an NCT alumni who has three Whatsapp groups and six new friends from the course I attended nearly two years ago, here’s what I learnt…
5 pros of doing the NCT course
1. You might actually learn something about having a baby
I definitely signed up to NCT for the social life. I mistakenly believed that I’d watched enough One Born Every Minute to deliver someone else’s baby: my own would be a cinch. Clearly I was wrong on several levels, but having explain what childbirth and those few hours afterwards would be like in a clear, non-judgemental way, backed up by evidence, made a huge amount of difference.
My caveat here is that I now realise that we were incredibly lucky to have a really pragmatic, non-judgmental course leader who was open to discussing and answering questions on all forms of childbirth, pain relief and feeding. It meant we got a lot out of the course on a practical level, but I would say that if you worry that you’re not getting that, try to make sure you’re as well informed as you can be yourself, and get a second opinion from your midwife. If at any point in your pregnancy you feel like you’re not being listened to or your fears are being dismissed, it’s important to question this.
2. Your partner might actually learn something about having a baby
Yes, my husband was engaged with the whole process of having a baby, but there’s nothing like watching a 3-D. Model of a baby being pushed out of a 3D model of a vagina to really bring to life what was about to unfold in a few short weeks. And whoever your birthing partner is, you will really need to them to be prepared for what’s going to happen, they need to understand what you want and need to happen, and they need to be willing to advocate for you when you can’t do it yourself. A good NCT course should give your birth partner some of the tools to do that. Ideally it means they’ll be less likely to mutter ‘Jesus Christ’ and start backing out of the labour room when things get hairy…
3. You will meet a group of people who are dealing with episiotomies, bleeding nipples, and insane levels of trapped wind AT THE EXACT SAME TIME AS YOU
There’s a reason why we forget exactly what the aftermath of childbirth is like soon after: it’s so the human race doesn’t die out. When I asked my mum what it was like, she told me it felt like pooing a melon and that I probably wouldn’t need an epidural. She was wrong about one of those.
But in the first few days and weeks after giving birth, you want to ask someone who’s five days ahead of you if her nipples have stopped bleeding yet, or exactly how itchy your stitches are supposed to get. Especially when it’s 4AM and you can guarantee at least one other woman in your WhatsApp group will be awake.
4. Your babies will be at the same stage at the exact same time
That annoying bit around eight weeks when your baby inexplicably stops napping during the day? The first time you try to give Calpol to your newly vaccinated baby using that syringe thing? The 16-week sleep regression? I couldn’t give you any useful advice about any of those things now, because now I have a toddler, they only exist somewhere in the recesses of my brain and I’m much more concerned about how I’m going to get him to stop biting people. But in those heady newborn days, all I wanted to do was talk to other parents who were just as knackered as me, and could confirm that their children also weren’t sleeping/feeding/pooing properly.
5. You might just make friends for life
When I was pregnant with my son, I went to a child’s birthday party (I was invited, I wasn’t just there as research). I got talking to a friend of the host, who I hadn’t met before, and found out that they’d known each other since they were born, and had similar-aged children. It turned out, of course, that their mothers had met when they were in the same NCT group, and remained lifelong friends.
So, if you get lucky, put in the time, and no-one falls out over the correct way to swaddle a newborn, you, and your child, might just make friends for life.
5 cons of doing the NCT course
1. It’s expensive and middle class
There’s no skirting around it - the average NCT class costs £262, for two people to attend 17 hours of courses in total, in sizes that are designed to form lifelong friendships. The NCT have also confirmed that they’re currently offering discounts if Covid restrictions mean the course has moved online, and offer courses for families on a lower income.
For me, this meant giving it a little bit more thought before deciding to sign up, but for other people they simply won’t be able to afford it at all, or it’ll be the different between buying something they really need for their baby and not. The result is that you might well find yourself in quite a middle-class bubble on your course. Incidentally, if you just don’t think it’s something you can justify spending money on - or just don’t want to, your hospital should also offer free birthing classes, which your midwife will be able to offer you details of.
2. It’s time consuming
17 hours is actually quite a long time - two full days over a weekend or an evening a week for eight weeks. Although if your midweek nights out have been curtailed/you happen to be locked down in the middle of a pandemic, maybe this is less of a big deal than it used to be…
3. People might move
This probably depends quite heavily on where you live, but friends of mine who have lived in cooler (younger) and more transient parts of big cities have found that a year or so in, when second children (and the need for a second or third bedroom) came onto the agenda, a lot of their groups moved out of the area, in search of their own front door and outdoor space. Of course a strong friendship will a survive one of you moving from zone 2 to zone 4, but keeping a fledging friendship going when you can’t just meet up by the swings in the local park at 20 minutes notice gets trickier.
4. You might not make lifelong friends
You can pick your irl friends, but, like your family, you can’t pick your NCT group. Maybe you’ll all get on fine on the course, but never manage to click outside the room, or drift apart once you’re all back at work. Maybe you’ll go along to your first session and realise with absolutely certainty that these are not going to be your people. It’s fine if that happens, there are so many different ways to meet parenting friends, especially once lockdown lifts and those all important baby classes and playgroups reopen. NCT is a weirdly pressurised scenario in which to make friends, akin only to the first day of school (when you were five) and the Fresher’s week at uni (when you were drunk). So try not to put too much pressure on yourself if it doesn't work out.
5. You might not always get the type of support you need
I can’t emphasise enough what a great experience I had with my NCT course, and many women I know have said the same thing. But there have also been reports over the years of women receiving poor or no information on areas including pain relief, formula feeding and C-sections. It’s worth noting that the N in NCT used to stand for Natural, until this was changed in 1961 to National. In 2019, the trust’s president Seána Talbot resigned, in protest at the trust’s shift away from breastfeeding and birth support, to more generic ‘parenting support’ with a focus on post-natal mental health, exposing rifts within the organisation over where their priority ought to lie.
The type of course leader you have will to an extent, be luck of the draw - like so much of having a baby. But try and do your research beforehand, and start to think about the sort of childbirth experience you’d like to have - and remember that NCT should be about informing your decision, not making it for you.