Coronavirus drives parents to online childbirth classes

Nervous parents-to-be are turning to online childbirth and parenting classes in droves amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mother-to-be Liz Evans with parent education midwife Monica Sadowski at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Picture: Britta Campion

Nervous parents-to-be are turning to online childbirth and parenting classes in droves amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with Australian hospitals now offering virtual­ courses and online providers revealing a spike in take-up.

Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital shifted its childbirth and parenting classes online within three weeks of strict physical distancing measures being enforced in March.

Parent-education midwife and teacher Monica Sadowski said pregnancy was “often a time of ­anxiety and nervousness and, on top of that, COVID-19 struck’’.

“We were the first hospital to move to stop running face-to-face classes and in turn we were the fastest to get to online classes (in Sydney).

“There was a huge influx of interest­ in our classes — there was so much interest, we were getting parents from other hospitals inquiring, too.”

After face-to-face classes were cancelled on March 11, Ms Sadowski shifted the childbirth and parenti­ng courses online by the end of the month.

More than 600 parents joined the virtual classes delivered over Zoom video conferencing and via an interactive online forum.

Ms Sadowski said the classes were so popular that the hospital would offer a mixture of face-to-face and online antenatal and ­parenting classes into the future.

Mother-to-be Liz Evans, 35, decided­ to take the online course after becoming pregnant with her first baby in November.

“It’s a very strange time to be pregnant — you’re trying to physically distance to keep you and your baby safe but I was concerned we would miss out on the information we would normally get in the face-to-face classes,” she said. Ms Evans said that she felt more “in control” and “reassured” after she completed online breastfeeding, labour and post-natal classes.

“It’s hard to know how to deal with this because it’s completely unprecedented and the staff responded really quickly,” she said.

“I’ve had a more complicated pregnancy so all of the inform­ation … has been great.”

Ms Evans said hospitals in the future should deliver a mixture of in-person and online classes to strike the right balance on prac­tical tips such as “swaddling and handling the baby”.

The pandemic forced other hospitals to rethink their approach to antenatal courses.

Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital filmed childbirth edu­cat­ors delivering modules of their antenatal course that is normally facilitated in person, to host it ­online.

Director of maternity Jenny Ryan said the course provided information­ on everything “preparing for labour and what to expect­ after birth”.

The Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital said it did not provide online antenatal courses, but would consult with patients and consider “smaller in-person classes as well as a virtual model”.

Nourish Baby — a provider that delivers only online ­pre-­pregnancy and post-birth courses — also recorded a tenfold increase in usage of its courses during the pandemic.