From left: Louise with Emilia, Annabel with Jacob, Liz with Harry and Jack, Helen with Ruby, Gill with Arthur, me with Evelina, Harriet with Rory and Laura with Martha
When we found out that we were having Evelina, we decided to enrol in NCT ante-natal classes. Partly, this was because we had heard good thing about these classes from friends. I didn’t really know what to expect from the classes as I didn’t actually do much research into what the classes entailed. I was hoping for a lot of information on how to look after a baby once she was born. It turned out that the majority of the classes were geared around preparing for the birth and breastfeeding (if you wanted to formula feed, fuhgeddaboudit!). The after care bit – the bit I thought was going to be the most crucial – was not really covered past a quick nappy change practice and some other key points. I can understand now why it was this way: how on earth can you prepare yourself and learn it all when you don’t have the most important component – i.e. a baby – on which to practice?!
I remember at the beginning of the course, the facilitator asked us to say why we were there and at least a couple of people said it was because they were new to the area and they wanted to make some mum friends. I hadn’t really thought about this – at least consciously – but I realised that it was going to be useful to have this network of mums at the exact same stage as you. There are two reasons I think that our NCT experience was a success – our facilitator Sarah was amazing: down-to-earth, funny and honest; and the group of parents-to-be with whom we were grouped were brilliant.
After the last session, we went to The Waterman for a meal and some drinks (the men drank, the very pregnant women drove) and we watched our menfolk bond. They have since managed a couple of nights out together but us ladies are doing much better. Since the course, we have met almost every week for some kind of coffee / cake / walk / baby play / lunch and it has been so completely invaluable, I don’t know what I would have done without them.
Without wanting to be too soppy, these women have encouraged, laughed, sympathised, empathised and generally bucked me up when I needed it. I am lucky enough to have quite a few friends who are mothers already and they have all helped me in some way but to have a regular meetup where you can ask the most mundane questions about the smallest parts about being a mum (“Does she need a cardigan,” for example!). I can hardly phone my friends up every time I want to ask a silly small question – not matter how much I am sure they would say I can – so having these great girls around is superb. We even have our own Facebook group so we can talk about things privately there in between meetups. The best things is that, as well as the baby support, they are just really great people who I enjoy hanging out with so I can be Kate for a bit as well as Mama.
