Hello,

Just wanted to ask if anyone has had a yuk experience with a bad antenatal educator?

We have been to two full day workshops - one on labour and birth (which was fantastic!!) and the second on "Parentcraft".

Labour and birth workshop was great, and we were given the facts and advantages and disadvantages of doing things a certain way. It was all unbiased and full of great useful info for us, and the midwives there were friendly and approachable and answerred our questions without making us feel dumb, even if they were silly questions.

The Parentcraft workshop was a waste, IMO. We found the educator to be very opinionated. She was only telling us about what she would do, rather than all the options and the good and bad points of those. For example, she told everyone to never use disposable nappies and that we all have to use cloth and cloth only. Then she told one of the dads off for asking if it was possible for his wife to express milk during the day so he could get up and do a feed in the middle of the night if she was too exhausted to. I suppose it was just more the way she said it that bothered me. Then told someone else off when they asked about using formula to supplement breast milk if not much breast milk is being produced. This really annoyed me because it was a totally valid question and the way she answered was completely rude and out of line. She was standing on her stupid soap box all day long. There weere so many other things she did too.

We then got to put nappies on dolls and wrap the dolls. There were three couples in the group who werent "anglo" - an Asian couple, an Indian couple and a couple where he was African American and she was Anglo. And the midwife gave the black skinned dolls specifically to those couples and the fair skinned dolls to everyone else, and it was obviously deliberate (you could tell by the way she looked for the dark dolls. We just thought that was really wrong and stupid. I might be over-reacting, but we just didnt like it - DH and I thought it was a bit racist.

So basically, I am just asking if anyone else has been to a terrible antenatal class? Or did we just get a bad educator? Is it normal that they try to force their opinions and talk down to you?

sorry for ranting. I am going to write a letter to the place and tell them about it, but I just wanted to see if it was the "norm".