I love facilitating antenatal classes, it must be the frustrated actress in me. I taught them solidly for 10 years, couples, teenagers and active birth, they were all rewarding and for the majority of the time fun. I’ll admit that when I was shifted to my new patch, and the classes were held on a Wednesday so my job-share always had to do them, I was quite happy, I had got bored with the repetitive nature of the information. It’s now been 18 months though and, other than a few ‘one-on-one’ sessions with couples who were traumatised by previous birth experiences, my educational aids have sat, gathering dust, in my dining-room. On Sunday I gave son and DIL a quick, uncomplicated birth chat. They had been to their first parentcraft class that week and were less than impressed with it’s content and the fact that the midwife dismissed all questions with a ‘you don’t need to know that, or a ‘you’ll cope with that if it happens’ attitude. Well, yesterday they had the ‘complicated labour and birth’ session which should have covered induction of labour, interventions, ventouse, forceps, caesarian section and epidurals, and when son recounted the class to me I was reduced to tears, of laughter. Son was not impressed by my hilarity, and bought me up short by reminding me that ‘it was alright for him as he had me to give them all the information, but the others weren’t as lucky’. What I was laughing about was the description of the midwife’s behaviour when she was talking about a stretch and sweep. Apparently, whilst she was talking, she had the demonstration pelvis on her lap and was absent-mindedly doing the motions a midwife would undertake when carrying out the stretch and sweep, the 2 fingers together, them straight and moving forward and then rotating, all within the pelvis. I was laughing at this due to the fact that I could identify with this, I’m one of those people who use their hands a lot when speaking. Son went on though, he was fixated by watching the midwife as, by the end of her description, her fingers, then hand and wrist were disappearing into the pelvis and appearing out of the top. He was very concerned for all the women in the class, by all accounts they were all wide-eyed, and transfixed by the spectre of a stretch and sweep which wouldn’t be out of place on ‘Vets in Practice.
Back to being serious now, obviously the classes they are attending are not fulfilling their purpose, and this makes me feel sad, frustrated and angry. As son pointed out I can rectify the short-comings for him and DIL, I can’t for all the other couples. Those couple’s time as been wasted, their expectations not met, and possibly their opinion of midwives and their faith in the maternity unit put into question. I don’t blame the midwife, I blame the expectation by the service organisers that all midwives should facilitate these classes. The midwife knows all the information, she has been a midwife for many, many years but this does not mean that she is comfortable standing (or sitting) in front of 20 – 30 people and passing on her knowledge in an interesting form. Years ago we had a antenatal class co-ordinator, that was her only role. She would organise all the classes, design and provide the resources and be the contact point for all the women attending and the midwives conducting them. The midwives who facilitated the classes would have put themselves forward as wishing to incorporate this condensed information giving role into their practice, therefore they were motivated and enthusiastic, ideal for making the classes well-structured, appropriate and stimulating for the participants. This system was abandoned locally several years ago, obviously a money saving exercise. The co-ordinator role was abolished and it is now a piece-meal approach with equipment that is old, and often broken and midwives who feel ill at ease communicating to a room of people and so rely on ancient videos, one I’ve seen dates back to the 1970s, to fill in the time allocated to this important element of preparation for labour, birth and those first few days with baby. No wonder the NCT are so popular.
Wow! Even though I have had a stretch and sweep myself, that explanation and description would calm no expectant mum surely??
My antenatal classes (4 years ago!) weren’t too bad, I guess. But there was a single-mindedness on the part of the midwife that was sometimes quite off putting as she wasn’t really open to differences of opinion. Difficult, I suppose, if you have to support current policy.
Yes, we had ancient videos, but I have to say that a lot of the information was useful in alleviating some fears. A lot of of it, though, wasn’t as current as we thought; things were quite different when we got to the hospital.
I’ve just finished NHS antenatal classes. We had three different midwives over four classes (so organisation was lacking, which wasn’t the midwives’ fault) and it was very clear that two of the midwives were not comfortable presenting to/teaching a large group. One was expert at it, however. We weren’t shown any videos, it was all discussion and handouts.
I’m glad I’m doing the NCT classes as well in a few weeks. The NHS ones were useful in terms of knowing what our particular hospital is like in terms of what is offered, procedures, when to come in etc, but not a great deal else. More structure would have helped. It was obvious that the classes, as well as everything else, had been badly affected by staff shortages (and probably also by the news that maternity services are being done away with at this particular hospital).
p.s. do your educational aids include a brown knitted uterus? I thought that was a myth until it was brought out in the first class 🙂
mumof4 – As son said – ‘the women looked horrified’.
Anne – Our knitted uterus is blue, with poppers! At least with the NCT classes all the facilitators want to teach the classes so they are going to be enthusuastic and NCT are great for the social aspect.
Ishtar – It is difficult when doing the classes not to let personal perspectives to show, I find it best to declare when I have a ‘problem’ with some approaches, and why, so then we can discuss other points of view.