My first clinical day as a student midwife will be in the antenatal class. This runs over 6 hours and mainly covers pregnancy information and an education session regarding the birth itself and about 1 hour on post natal information. Is this similar to what happens in the UK ,US and NZ ? After taking this class when I was pregnant I found that not enough time was devoted to post-natal.

The antenatal classes I attended as a mum-to-be (Not a student midwife) was 1 and half hours every Wednesday evening for approx 8 weeks. They covered later stage of pregnancy, options during labour and birth ie; positions to labour in, hospital v home, pain management options, options such as Vit K plus an insight into what happens post natal. The community midwives explained more about post natal care, postnatally than what was covered by the classes though other than 2 home visits and one clinic visit all of our post natal care was covered by Health Visitors.

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Blimey Nici, now they are good antenatal classes, the only ones our trust do now (due to cutbacks DOH!!) are a one off on a sat/sun at the hospital, run differently depending on midwives, but generally labour, parentcraft, they call it, breastfeeding as always is heavily promoted, then a quick tour of delivery, or they show em the pool room and thats it!! In the surestart areas they get more extensive sessions, but otherwise midwives in community are too thin on the ground it would seem some teams don't do any at all.

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Have you just been offered a place? If so and you want a mentor please post in post this forum (also post here if you would like a mentee)

well thats better than the team i am currently with...
they do a 2 -3 hour drop every month and have various exhibition stands with info on them re pain relief, birthing centres etc. Breastmates come and then there is a talk by one of the best midwives I know, but no-one wants to say anything as they are all thrown in a room together in a big group and dont want to talk about pv loss or anything quite so uncomfortable as that with complete strangers! and who can blame them.
And now no tour of unit coz of novovirus etc.

Trouble is, the team know it isnt being provided very well, but their hands are tied by various constraints that make it hard to provide anything else.
Its the only aspect of my community placement that has left me feeling a bit disastisfied.

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