Free Preparation for Birth and Beyond classes for parents-to-be delivered in partnership with local NHS Trusts.
Book your free NHS NCT Antenatal course
NCT is commissioned by NHS Foundation Trusts to offer antenatal education to parents-to-be receiving antenatal care within their community.
We are also providing an antenatal drop in for one Local Authority in Leeds and have a DHSC grant to offer wrap around antenatal and postnatal care in Newham.
Why choose NCT?
Our Preparation for Birth and Beyond courses are:
- free at point of user
- targeted programmes preparing pregnant women and their partners/birth partners for labour, birth, and the immediate postnatal period
- evidence based information to enable participants to make informed decisions
- experienced with 65 years of running antenatal education programmes
What do we offer?
Our sessions are online, interactive 6-hour Preparation for Birth and Beyond courses facilitated by NCT Practitioners.
The aim is to help parents-to-be get the practical skills they need to cope with labour and care for their baby, and an understanding of how to nurture their own relationship across the transition to parenthood and to how to co-parent their baby.
The course supports people to share their feelings, recognise the skills they already have to nurture their babies and maintain positive mental health, and develop a support group where they can share the challenges of parenting with their peers.
The sessions include practical activities and small group discussions, allow the group to bond and promote positive mental health and develop support networks before and after birth.
Closed WhatsApp groups are set up for each course and used for further signposting and to enable bonding to form a network of people having babies at the same time.
The courses follow a standardised slide set, content and course plan approved by the Foundation Trust, including the inclusive language used to offer continuity between sessions.
What do the courses cover?
The Preparation for Birth and Beyond course comprises six essential core themes:
- The development of your unborn baby
- Changes for you and your partner
- Your health and wellbeing
- Giving birth
- Caring for your baby
- Which people and services are there for you?
The course will cover such things as:
- Looking after yourself and your baby in late pregnancy.
- Labour and birth - the process & role of hormones, things you can do to help, pain relief options, induced labour, assisted and caesarean birth, options for the delivery of the placenta and information about local options for place of birth.
- Skin to skin immediately after birth & the Fourth Trimester
- Practical baby-care including nappy changing, bathing, and safer sleeping
- How babies communicate, brain development and calming babies
- Strains on a relationship when a baby comes along, being prepared for these and thinking about how to minimise them
- Sources of support and information for new parents including local information
For further details of how we can help your Foundation Trust, please contact programme.delivery@nct.org.uk.