comprehensive face-to-face Course

Full Antenatal Course

An About Birth and Babies full antenatal course will cover everything you need to know about birth and early parenthood. The courses are comprehensive, face to face and interactive. They allow plenty of time for discussion and questions, include practical tools and strategies for labour, birth and early parenthood and to top it off, we hope you have a lot of fun and make some new friends along the way.

Our aim is to provide you with all the knowledge, confidence and skills needed so you feel in control and have a calm, positive birth and early parenting experience, no matter how your baby is born. We would also like you to feel fully prepared and empowered to ask questions and trust your natural instincts in order to make the best choices for you and your baby.

There are typically six – nine pregnant woman with birth partners on a course which is a tried and tested model. You’ll have the opportunity to socialise and get to know the others and we’ll have the time to devote to you and your individual needs. Courses are sixteen hours long; fourteen of these will be packed with antenatal education and two hours dedicated to meeting up after your baby is born. Our postnatal socials happen every few weeks. We bring together parents from a number of different courses, giving you the opportunity to extend your social network further.

What’s included in our birth and parenting preparation courses?

• What to expect physically and emotionally before, during and after birth and suggestions of what you can do to prepare 
• Your antenatal and postnatal support team – who’s in and who’s out!
• Place of birth; home, midwifery-led birthing unit, delivery suite
• Stages of labour and birth
• Recognising signs that your labour has started and is becoming established, when to call a midwife to attend at home/make the move to hospital
• Understanding the delicate blend of hormones and creating a safe, calm birth environment
• Birth partner’s role and toolkit; practical ideas, skills and strategies for pregnancy, birth and early parenthood
• Coping strategies for a comfortable, upright birth with an emphasis on keeping active and working with your body; bringing together practised breathing techniques, visualisation, relaxation, positions, movement, distraction and massage
• Pain management; self-help and medical options
• Induction, assisted birth and caesarean birth; what’s involved and why they might be offered in plain, simple terms
• Being aware of choices and options throughout this journey, having the confidence to ask questions, use decision making tools and trust your natural instincts to allow informed (rather than fear-based) decision making
• Practical babycare such as bathing, nappy changing, safe sleeping, crying and winding
• Feeding; breastfeeding, formula feeding, expressing, mixed feeding
• Expectations around the transition to parenthood and life with a newborn baby including perinatal mental health

As specially trained facilitators in adult education as well as antenatal education, we will encourage your participation through activities and discussion. Our pregnancy classes are interactive because we know you will learn better by doing things as well as talking about it! 

Hypnobirthing essentials are woven throughout all About Birth and Babies courses to help you manage any anxieties and feel more calm and relaxed. When we say essentials, we’re referring to things like breathing techniques, creating an environment where you feel safe, practising massage and understanding the role of hormones. We also offer a unique combined course. By opting to ‘bolt on’ two dedicated hypnobirthing sessions, we will walk you through the more in-depth practice of hypnobirthing. 

You will be invited to join a closed WhatsApp group so you can keep in regular contact with your teacher and others on your course. Your teacher is always (well nearly always!) available to support you throughout your journey to parenthood and during the early weeks if you need help with breastfeeding or general reassurance. We’ve had multiple children between us, so we know only too well what it’s like to be a new parent!