What to look for in a good antenatal course

You’re pregnant! Congratulations! That’s such exciting news! Is your mind whirring, thinking about all things you need to do before your baby arrives…? May I suggest that, fairly high on your list, you put “book onto an antenatal course”?  The reasons to attend an antenatal course are many and varied (see blogs from 2016 and 2020 for more thoughts on that), so this blog is going to focus on what to look for when deciding which course to sign up to.

What do you want?

First things first - think about what you want to get from an antenatal course.

Clearly, you are after information, but think about what sort of information you want? Other than understanding the process of labour and birth, which is the absolute minimum an antenatal course should give you, what else can you learn?

• Do you want to learn skills that may help you to have a positive birth experience, whatever happens - who wouldn’t want that?! In that case you need to look for a hypnobirthing course, or a course that incorporates elements of hypnobirthing such as breathing and visualisation skills.

• Are you after info on caring for and feeding your baby as well as considering the birth itself? Although this sounds obvious, not all courses offer a postnatal element to the course content.

• Do you want to meet other local couples due around the same time as you, who you can make friends with and create a support network with? In which case, you want to find a course that is long enough to give you a chance to chat to the other participants over a period of time - a single, 3 hour course is not going to give you that. This friendship-building opportunity is so vitally important for once you have your baby, although many people don’t realise the value of this until their baby is here and they wish they had had a chance to get to know others in pregnancy.

Does your antenatal course offer more than standard?

Who’s running it?

If possible, it is worth finding out a bit about the teacher who will be facilitating your courses:

• How long have they been teaching?

• Are they involved in other elements of the birth world - are they a midwife, a doula, a lactation consultant etc as well?

• What first hand experience of birth do they have other than having their own children?

Reading reviews or testimonials of their classes can be helpful. Or it may be possible to chat to or email the teacher before committing, to find out more about her and the course she is offering.

Course format

As well as thinking about what you want the course to include, it can be worth looking at the format.

• Is it in the evening, spread over several weeks? If so, what time do the sessions start and end? Will you get home from work in time if they start early, or will you get very tired by the end if they finish late?

• If it is during the day, is it a full day or several half days? A full day course may seem like a good idea to get it all done in one go, but it is virtually impossible to retain all that info that you are taking in over 6 or 7 hours, and there won’t be so many opportunities to go away and reflect on what you’ve learnt and then come back to ask questions that have occurred to you since the previous session.

• Are there sessions for just the women and/or just the men to attend within the course? These single sex sessions can be a great way to get to know half the group better, can open up more questions (perhaps ones that you didn’t want to ask in front of your own or other people’s partners), and can cover topics that are more specific for the group in question.

• Is the teaching style more of a lecture - you just being given specific information, or does the teacher encourage questions and discussions, include small group activities, or activities to do with your partner? Having a range of teaching styles can keep the course interesting and help you to retain the information, depending on what sort of a learner you are, as well as giving you more opportunities to chat to the other members of the group, share ideas and thoughts, and build friendships.

Does your antenatal course offer partners the opportunity to share independently as well?

Beyond the course

When the course ends, what then?

• Will you be given handouts to refer back to, as your due date draws closer and you want to remind yourself of what you covered possibly several weeks ago?

• Or are there videos provided for you to watch for “revision” purposes?

• Does your teacher offer any additional classes to help you to keep practising the physical skills for labour that you learnt during the course? Or will she signpost you to some if she doesn’t run them herself?

• Does she provide you with an MP3 of visualisations to listen to to help you to further prepare for the labour once the course has finished?

And once the babies are here, does the teacher provide a chance to meet up with the other course members, either as a social gathering (a reunion) or for a more structured postnatal class, to consider the realities of life with a new baby now that they’re actually here?

Does she offer any other postnatal activities or groups that you can go to with your baby - coffee mornings, baby massage, sing and sign classes etc?

It is so important for you, as a new mum, to have opportunities to attend events that give you a chance to meet other new mums, chat to them about their experiences, find out that you’re not alone in how you’re feeling or what your worries are, but it can sometimes be a bit daunting to walk into a room full of strangers on your own with a new baby. At least, if you already know the teacher, there will be one familiar face in the room, and you know you will be made to feel very welcome.

Price

Finally, think about the price of the course, and look carefully at what you get for your money.

Prices range from free (usually provided by NHS midwives and often fairly short in length, but definitely better than nothing) to many hundreds of pounds (with classes in London often being at a premium rate, not surprisingly), and it is fairly true to say you get what you pay for.

It is worth seeing how many hours you are getting for the price - often what looks like a  better value option actually works out as more expensive per hour than the one looked too pricey at first glance. If you can afford a more expensive course, which includes all or most of the elements mentioned above, you are unlikely to regret it.

If you can go into labour feeling confident in your body’s ability to birth your baby, well practised in skills to help you through the labour, knowledgeable about your options and what to expect so that if things go “off course” you are well prepared to deal with it and are not frightened or traumatised by your experience.

Then you are likely to go into parenthood knowing the importance of post-birth recovery, knowing where to turn to get any help you need and knowing that it is not a sign of weakness to ask for help, and feeling confident in your instinctive knowledge of your baby, as you get to know them better. All of this can lead to positive mental health as you start your journey into parenthood, and you cannot put a price on that.