The truth about prenatal classes

The midwife that was assigned to us at the primary health centre was lovely.
I felt that I could trust her. What a pity that she got changed a few weeks after and her replacement... to be honest, it was as if I had no midwife at all. I would like to think that a midwife is a person who orients you, resolves your doubts and answers questions which might seem absurd but which you find crucial at that moment, when you haven't got a clue about a thing. But it wasn't exactly like that despite the fact that I was making the effort to take prenatal classes seriously. I thought that they would provide me with useful knowledge and that I would learn some exercises to reduce the swelling of my hands (I'd had enough of having them in salt and water). The very first class did seem that it was going to be useful... later to find out that every class was the same and did not provide me with anything interesting. (By the way, I went through the same experience with postnatal classes). What's more, I always found myself in a bind whenever the midwife explained anything because I had to ask again and again: "Excuse me, and when it's twins... How do you go about doing this? Or what is the best way for me to organise this?". And it was tiresome, because strangely enough, there was only a pair of twins in that class.  Mine.

So... why continue attending these classes (which were a major effort because the bump made it hard for me to go from home to the primary health clinic and I got extremely tired)? Basically because they helped create the most useful social network in the whole system. Getting to know a group of great women who were all pregnant at the same time and who gradually gave birth one after the other. I ran into some of them in postnatal classes. Now we still meet up with a group of moms and we still share the most valuable information. In fact, it was the only positive outcome form having that midwife. As I could not compare I didn't know if she was good or bad at her job, but I felt that I was not getting anything from her. It wasn't until the night of the 14th of December 2008 that I could confirm this hunch. It turns out that everybody knew her at the hospital once I told them which primary health clinic I came from. Gosh, how lucky I was, wasn't I?