Antenatal care

NCT wants all women and their partners to feel supported during pregnancy and prepared for parenthood. 

NCT supports the NICE Guidelines on antenatal care (applicable to England and Wales) that were published in March 2008. We particularly welcome the strong emphasis that the updated Antenatal care guideline places on the promotion of informed-decision making. The guideline provides extremely positive recommendations about how women have the right to make choices about their care and screening options. It highlights the importance of women being provided with high quality, unbiased information, the opportunity to discuss and ask questions and sufficient time so that they are able to make fully informed-decisions.

In England, Maternity matters states that women should have a choice of type of antenatal care. And the English National service framework recommends that all women should have at least two antenatal checkups in early pregnancy. To complement this, Public Service Agreement 19 aims to increase the percentage of women that see a health professional for assessment of needs, risks and choices by 12 weeks pregnant. 

In Scotland, NHS Quality Improvement Scotland launched advice on scanning before 24 weeks of pregnancy in 2004, which recommended all pregnant women in Scotland should be routinely offered two ultrasound scans. The Scottish Women Held Maternity Record is a single national unified handheld record for women during their maternity care, and it covers the antenatal period.

The NCT provides antenatal classes, to find out more, click here.

You may also be interested in the reviews of evidence on the subject of pregnancy and birth, first published in NCT's quarterly professional development journal New Digest.