Nothing prepares you for childbirth – and yet, paradoxically, how we prepare. Over the last few months I have given much thought to how women in nature must have experienced labour. Something surprisingly different from their daily experience certainly but was there an ability to trust in the body’s natural processes that has long been lost? As Alexander Pope warned a little learning is a dangerous thing and there must be few women left in the world giving birth without at least some awareness of what will happen to them and the risks attendant upon giving birth.
As a London cyclist I am very interested in the question of risk perception: a risk that causes me no little or no concern I know deters thousands. Similarly we all know people for whom a fear of flying either makes it an impossible or a genuinely traumatic experience. Every one of us has a unique response to risk and the same is true for our experience of pain. One person’s slight discomfort is another’s unendurable torment.
And so to NCT training. The National Childbirth Trust was founded in 1956 as the Natural Childbirth Trust changing its name at the start of the 1960s. The vast majority of parents have their children with either no training at all or by attending the sessions offered by their local hospital but for the curious/anxious/diligent rest there is the NCT. Plainly any experience of NCT will be dictated by the teacher, fellow parents and one’s own expectations and anxiety about the whole undertaking.
Something I have rapidly learnt as a birth partner (father in waiting) is that there is no limit to how interested and useful one can be but also that there is no place for judgement as far as labour is concerned. I would no more suggest to my wife what her approach to pain relief should be than I would tell her how to apply her makeup.
That isn’t to say that I haven’t found NCT fascinating and in its own bizarre way extremely enjoyable. Weekly 2.5 hour sessions sitting in a circle with 8 mums 8 bumps and 8 dads in varying stages of apprehension and involvement has been a sociological insight well worth the time and expense even without the practical advice imparted.
An unintended highlight came at the start of one evening session when a bloke in his 50s wearing sunglasses wandered uncertainly in prompting the teacher quickly to whisper to him ‘Sorry mate, AA is downstairs this week’. He wandered out with an amiable ‘Didn’t look like my lot’. The teacher said things could get much more confused when there was a clash with Weight Watchers.
Any anxiety that we dads had about our purpose in all of this was neatly encapsulated in an account of a previous breastfeeding session when one of the fathers emailed the teacher in advance asking if the other mothers would definitely be alright with him attending, when she asked why he suggested they might be unhappy with him seeing their breasts. For the uninitiated it is worth knowing that no nudity is required on the NCT.
Of course the real purpose of NCT is to plug you into a supply of local expectants and my wife has dutifully signed up for the obligatory Whatsapp group. Part of me marvels gratefully that so great an institution should have grown up so quickly but another part wonders whether it is a shame that women’s wisdom concerning childbirth has become so formalised. If you haven’t yet, and if you still can, ask your own parents what their experience of childbirth was. I find that demystification, like charity, begins at home.
As a London cyclist I am very interested in the question of risk perception: a risk that causes me no little or no concern I know deters thousands. Similarly we all know people for whom a fear of flying either makes it an impossible or a genuinely traumatic experience. Every one of us has a unique response to risk and the same is true for our experience of pain. One person’s slight discomfort is another’s unendurable torment.
And so to NCT training. The National Childbirth Trust was founded in 1956 as the Natural Childbirth Trust changing its name at the start of the 1960s. The vast majority of parents have their children with either no training at all or by attending the sessions offered by their local hospital but for the curious/anxious/diligent rest there is the NCT. Plainly any experience of NCT will be dictated by the teacher, fellow parents and one’s own expectations and anxiety about the whole undertaking.
Something I have rapidly learnt as a birth partner (father in waiting) is that there is no limit to how interested and useful one can be but also that there is no place for judgement as far as labour is concerned. I would no more suggest to my wife what her approach to pain relief should be than I would tell her how to apply her makeup.
That isn’t to say that I haven’t found NCT fascinating and in its own bizarre way extremely enjoyable. Weekly 2.5 hour sessions sitting in a circle with 8 mums 8 bumps and 8 dads in varying stages of apprehension and involvement has been a sociological insight well worth the time and expense even without the practical advice imparted.
An unintended highlight came at the start of one evening session when a bloke in his 50s wearing sunglasses wandered uncertainly in prompting the teacher quickly to whisper to him ‘Sorry mate, AA is downstairs this week’. He wandered out with an amiable ‘Didn’t look like my lot’. The teacher said things could get much more confused when there was a clash with Weight Watchers.
Any anxiety that we dads had about our purpose in all of this was neatly encapsulated in an account of a previous breastfeeding session when one of the fathers emailed the teacher in advance asking if the other mothers would definitely be alright with him attending, when she asked why he suggested they might be unhappy with him seeing their breasts. For the uninitiated it is worth knowing that no nudity is required on the NCT.
Of course the real purpose of NCT is to plug you into a supply of local expectants and my wife has dutifully signed up for the obligatory Whatsapp group. Part of me marvels gratefully that so great an institution should have grown up so quickly but another part wonders whether it is a shame that women’s wisdom concerning childbirth has become so formalised. If you haven’t yet, and if you still can, ask your own parents what their experience of childbirth was. I find that demystification, like charity, begins at home.