Feeling let down by the NHS

We have discovered this week that the NHS ante-natal classes are so oversubscribed (or under resourced) that we can't get onto them. There is a waiting list of five couples for every place before our Expected Delivery Date and in August there are no classes anyway as too many staff are on holiday. I'm annoyed at our midwife for not telling us to apply for this as soon as possible. We only found out that there was a high demand for them through other couples.

This is not the first time the midwife has been less than perfect in my opinion. She failed to book our first scan correctly and if we had not chased it up we would have had our first scan at week 16 or 17 (instead of week 12 or 13). And at the first meeting she also made a remark that was a bit of a red flag to me. When I said that this was a first child for me as well as for Hayley she said "I should think so too". What a pompous remark in a world where there is an ever growing number of step families. But more worrying is the fact she seems to tell Hayley little or nothing at the appointments. We find out most things by reading up or talking to our friends who have already had children.

So the upshot is that we are trying to register for National Childbirth Trust classes which we will have to pay for (£126).

Anyway, at the risk of sounding churlish, it has hardly gone down well with us to find all this out in General Election week as Tony Blair bangs on every day about how great the NHS is these days.