There’s something about London that keeps you young. People
tend to make the big life choices a little later – there’s so much to do and
see that you can’t fit it all in your twenties. New bars and restaurants are
opening all the time, so it’s not like living in some one-pub town where you’re
bored of going out at 25. Plus, it’s not until your thirties that you can really
afford to settle yourself somewhere that you’d actually be happy to raise a
child in, so people tend to do it later.
Because of this, while we had plenty of friends with
children outside of the city, Steph and I were the first of our close circle of
London friends to take the plunge and decide to have a baby. If we’re honest
about it, we really miss the freedom of being able to go out whenever we want –
we do go out, but often it’s separately and if it's as a couple we have
to be home by 11 at the latest, which is NOT our idea of a good night out.
We’ve got around this by having people round for dinner more
and making the most of willing grandparents/siblings/cousins/godparents (thank
god for our large and generous families!!) and booking in as much babysitting
as possible. But despite this, we still see far less of our friends than we’d
actually like and months can go by without us getting to have a night out
together.
While Steph was pregnant, we discussed whether or not we
should sign up for NCT classes. Steph was unsure as NCT have had a lot of bad
press for putting pressure on new/expectant mothers on issues such as breastfeeding
and the use of drugs during childbirth. Also, there are lots of free classes
that the NHS put on for expectant parents, so the fact that the NCT classes are
relatively expensive was a factor that needed to be considered. One factor made
the decision for us: friends. We knew other couples who had made good, local
friends through their NCT groups and we also knew that our ‘real’ friends would
only have a limited tolerance for hanging around a screaming baby.
We signed up to classes in Borough and were part of a group made up
of 8 couples. After the first class, we thought that we had definitely made a
mistake: I actually remember saying to Steph, “I think that I might hate ALL of them”.
She agreed.
The issue was that this group of perfectly lovely people
were there to talk about babies, and people that talk about babies are boring,
right? I don’t know what we expected, or if it’s just that we hadn’t come to
the terms with the fact that we were hurtling towards Boringtown ourselves, but
we didn’t make any potential friends that week, nor did it look likely that we
would in the weeks to come.
There’s a strange pressure in looking at a group of 16
people and knowing that you have to pick friends from among them – it’s a bit
like being back at school. And in this class of young, shiny professionals,
Steph and I were very much the socially awkward nerds who huddle in the corner
and never raise their hands to answer the teacher’s questions.
Week 2 wasn’t much better. In week 1 we had be asked to go
around the group and each list our interests and hobbies to our new friends.
Steph went last and following an enthusiastic group of amateur sportsmen, avid
readers and semi-professional chefs, my heavily-pregnant girlfriend announced
that her main hobby was going out and drinking gin. This got a few titters, a
glare from the lady running the class and then silence… Week 2 started with the
teacher asking us to go round again, but this time we had to pick someone else
from the group and reel of the facts that they had shared about themselves the
week before. This happened every week and without fail someone piped up, “that’s
Steph, she likes gin”. I was slightly cross about this as Steph has plenty of
other hobbies that she could of listed, for example she’s also very keen on
wine..
But over time, we did warm to the group and tentative
friendships started to form. It was a really diverse group with a great mix of
nationalities and cultures present, meaning that conversations around the
traditions of childbirth and rearing were actually really interesting (obviously,
this is all relative). The group was made up of people from Britain, Canada,
Iceland, Germany, Greece and Japan, and everyone had their own opinions and ideas about
how they wanted to raise their child. What we really liked about the group was
that no-one was placid, unquestioningly taking the NCT advice on board – things
were questioned and debated, before people made up their own minds about what
they wanted to do. We learnt as much from the people in the class as from the
class itself.
As for the class itself. It was useful and covered all the basics,
but really didn’t give us much more knowledge than the free NHS classes already
had. Some of the advice was great, some was just plain silly – we were told to
take 7 pillows to the hospital (and had a demonstration on where the doting
father-to-be should place them on his labouring wife/girlfriend), when in
reality there isn’t enough space for more than three pillows in the average
hospital cubicle. I was actually asked by hospital staff to take some of our
supplies home as it was taking up too much space and staff kept tripping over it. (I rather resented this as I had decided that the
best way to maintain control of this terrifying situation was to freeze about
300 juice cartons so that they would be nice and chilled for the labour –
I’m sure that any labouring woman will tell you that her main concern is
whether or not she has a perfectly chilled Capri Sun to hand …)
One thing I will say is that the advice was all great, as
long as you have a nice normal birth, Steph didn’t (she had an emergency
C-section) so a lot of what we learned didn’t apply to us, and we had only very
quickly brushed over the basics of problematic births in the classes.
Was it worth it? Yes. At the end of the last class, the 8
couples all made plans to meet-up again and the mums have done every week since
then – as a stay-at-home Dad, I also go along and it’s lovely to see the 8
babies playing together. The dads also have occasional nights in the pub and everyone has meshed really well.
After Oscar was born and I had gone back to work, Steph
found the other mothers in NCT to be a real lifeline and they have all become
really close whilst navigating the pitfalls of early motherhood together.
We’ve known them for over a year now and would consider
everyone in the group to be a real friend – that’s got to be worth a few
hundred quid of anyone’s money. So, to summise: go to NCT for the friends, make
a list of your hobbies so that you don’t panic and paint yourself as an
irresponsible alcoholic mother-to-be, ignore their advice about pillows.
Dan out. x
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