I'm normally home watching Australia's Masterchef and eating dessert with James at that time, but tonight we was heading out in the freezing cold instead.
We found our way through the clinic and to the training room where the class was being held and were greeted with the excited hollers from a women who wasn't quite in view yet.
As we entered the room there was a man sitting on a chair and a women. The women was the tutor and the man, your not going to believe this, he was there by himself because his wife couldn't attend!
I actually felt it was a bit creepy him sitting there by himself but during the course of the evening he turned out to be a really nice guy who engaged with people and seemed genuinely interested in what they had to say.
"Are you the twins?!" the tutor screeched. I looked at James and thought to myself "do we look like fucking twins?" but that just shows how dim I've been these past few days lol
Apparently one of the other couples was expecting twins.
It wasn't long before another couple arrived. "Are you the twins?!" She looked at her partner confused and I just know she was thinking the same thing that I did!
Then another couple - thank god she was having twins, not that you'd have guessed.
The tutor explained that women with twins cause a bit of an issue because they need addressing differently. One of the other tutors actually had two couples having twins once!!! OMG!!!
The women having the twins seemed as interested as the rest of us.
So that was three and a half couples and another one was on holiday.
We had the introduction bit with name and how we feel about attending and then she split us into men and women (sitting according to due date) and had another introduction bit with name and how much we knew about pregnancy and babies.
She put it into the context of if we had any midwives or obstetricians amongst us so I said I knew nothing meaning I wasn't in a related profession but everyone else said they knew loads from all the friends and family they had with babies so yay for identifying myself as the stupid mummy to be loner. Even James knew more than me apparently!
She gave each team a sheet of paper to write on what we wanted to cover in the classes and it felt a bit like writing our own syllabus. The Nhs covered most of the essential stuff in one 2 hour session, surely the NCT could cover the same in more depth and loads of related topics in six 2 hour sessions?!
While we thought of stuff the tutor apologised for her mouldy looking doll and told us how she'd been in trouble once for putting her doll on the floor because apparently that's negative visual association as babies shouldn't go on the floor.
That brief little tale has bothered me since. Why can't babies go on the floor? Is it really bad that I'm even puzzled by that at all? What's so wrong with the floor? I was too embarrassed to ask.
We handed the lists back and they included the usual things like pain relief, csections, changing nappies, etc, etc.
The tutor then pulled out the exact same cross section images of the progression of labour that were used in the Nhs classes but the descriptions were more detailed. We had to place the images in order and then the descriptions.
Then she read through them and she must have apologised to the twin lady about ten times about how the images were for just one baby and kept on making additions to the descriptions to extend to twins but it was so unnecessary. It was all obvious or pc additions.
Then there were two images placed on the floor that were cross sections of a women's body before and during pregnancy and each team had to label them asap, the loser made the coffee. We got the distorted pregnancy one and lost.
We had a brief discussion about the effects of a women's organs being rammed up into their ribcage and then headed off to brew up.
There didn't seem to be any rush and the break must have lasted about 20 mins, afterwards it was only 8:30pm though. Bloody hell it was dragging.
Next she filled some tights with groceries that each represented the extra weight gain of pregnancy and passed it around. Good for the guys I guess.
I was clock watching by this point... Come on 9pm... Surely it must be 9 by now... I started miming to James to find out what time it was and finally the tutor seemed to change pace and just chatting about general stuff and I managed to see the clock - 9:10?! Wtf? OMG it runs until 9:30!!! Nooooooooooooo.
The tutor explained that the NCT like to teach relaxation techniques even though she hated it and thought it was stupid and always wanted to giggle. She almost seemed to be sabotaging how well it would be received before she even started.
I quite like that stuff so I closed my eyes and tried to listen intently to her uninterested tone stuttering through the verses. It was awful so I reverted to the classroom tactic of needing to pee, so I could sit in peace picking spots and looking at my belly button while time passed.
I wasn't gone that long for fear of them thinking I was having a poo and was surprised that she'd already finished the "relaxation" section. Everyone was just chatting again.
Finally it was time to go and I was so glad to be out of there.
It's not that it was terrible, it was just so unstructured. You could have condensed all the learning bits into an hour and still included enough chat to pacify anyone who wanted to meet fellow bumps.
I preferred the tutor to the midwives and the smaller groups allowed for more interaction on a one on one basis.
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