Early Pregnancy & First Trimester Antenatal Course (4-13 weeks)
Antenatal education shouldn’t start halfway through pregnancy.
Pregnancy has already started. Your support should too.
You’re already pregnant. Your body is changing, you’re navigating symptoms, appointments, scans and decisions, and trying to work out what information actually applies to you.
And you’re already learning what pregnancy is like — from your experiences, the maternity system, the information you’re given and the opinions you hear along the way. By the time traditional antenatal education begins, months of that learning have already happened — including assumptions you may later be better off unlearning.
The CubCare First Trimester Course is online, on-demand antenatal education created specifically for weeks 4–13, so you can make that learning more deliberate, understand what’s happening now and build knowledge you’ll use throughout the rest of pregnancy.
Nobody tells you how much of early pregnancy happens in your head
You might not look pregnant yet, but your body is already working incredibly hard.
You’re exhausted in a way that doesn’t quite make sense. Your symptoms seem to change from one day to the next, and every change leaves your brain trying to work out what it means.
You might find yourself checking for blood every time you go to the toilet. Counting down to a scan that somehow feels like the moment pregnancy will become real, even though it’s already changing your body, your sleep, your concentration and your ability to get through an ordinary day.
Meanwhile, life carries on.
You’re still expected to go to work. Reply to messages. Remember things. Keep plans. Function normally. Sometimes without anyone else even knowing you’re pregnant.
It’s very easy to experience these first weeks as something to get through. To count down to 12 weeks, the next scan, the point when you can tell people, or simply the day when you might start feeling more like yourself again.
But there is so much happening here that is worth understanding.
The way your body is responding. The questions you find yourself asking. How you cope with uncertainty. What happens when you need medical advice. How you feel about scans, screening and risk. Who you turn to when you need support. The things that help you feel informed and the things that leave you with even more questions.
These aren’t just first-trimester problems to get past. They’re some of your first experiences of being pregnant. And many of them will come up again in different forms throughout the months ahead.
When you start to understand what is happening now, you’re doing more than making the first trimester easier to navigate.
You’re beginning your antenatal education.
Early pregnancy gives you information in pieces
Pregnancy doesn’t happen one appointment at a time, yet it’s treated like it’s on a need-to-know basis.
It unfolds continuously, yet most of the support available in the first trimester arrives one conversation at a time. A booking appointment explains one stage. A leaflet answers one question. A Google search helps with today’s symptom. Each piece of information makes sense on its own, but you’re left trying to work out how it connects to everything else that’s happening.
That’s why so many people end up bouncing between apps, forums, social media and late-night Google searches. They aren’t necessarily struggling to find information.
You’re trying to build an understanding of your pregnancy from lots of disconnected pieces.
The First Trimester Course was created to change that.
Imagine knowing why your body is doing what it’s doing. Going into an appointment already understanding what it’s for. Being offered a test or recommendation and knowing what questions you want to ask. Having a symptom change without immediately feeling as though you’re back at square one.
Not knowing everything. Knowing enough to understand your own pregnancy as it unfolds.
Pregnancy is continuous. Your antenatal education should be too.
What you’ll learn in the First Trimester Course
The First Trimester Course gives you the antenatal education that is usually missing from early pregnancy: what’s happening in your body, how maternity care works, how to make sense of the information you’re given and what is worth thinking about now.
Understand your changing body and first trimester symptoms
Learn what is happening week by week, why early pregnancy can affect you so strongly, what can help with common symptoms and when something needs medical assessment.
Understand the emotional side of becoming pregnant
Pregnancy is the beginning of a huge change, and that adjustment starts now. Explore excitement, uncertainty, worry and mixed feelings, alongside changes in your identity, relationships, everyday life and thoughts about becoming a parent.
Know how NHS maternity care, scans and screening work
Understand how to start maternity care, who you might see, what happens at early pregnancy appointments, what scans can and can’t tell you, and what screening actually means.
Work out whose voices you want in your ear
Think about who you want around you, whose opinions are useful and when you need expertise rather than another opinion. Start building the support that will matter as your pregnancy progresses.
Make sense of risk, recommendations and pregnancy decisions
Learn what a risk label actually tells you, how to make numbers more meaningful, which questions help when something is recommended and how you make decisions when there isn’t one right answer.
Make everyday life in the first trimester more manageable
Get practical guidance on food, hydration, movement, exercise, fatigue, rest, breathing and sleep, with ways to adapt when your capacity changes from one day to the next.
Know what is worth doing now — and what can wait
Start building the knowledge, support, decision-making skills and physical foundations that benefit from time, without feeling as though you need to prepare for the whole of pregnancy and birth at once.
Ask the questions that come up as your pregnancy unfolds
Course members can submit questions for my weekly First Trimester Q&A. Each week I’ll answer suitable questions and add them to the course, so you can watch or listen whenever it suits you. There’s no live call to attend — just somewhere to ask when the course prompts another question, something comes up at an appointment or you find yourself wondering what something means.
Online and on-demand, so you can work through the course from beginning to end or go straight to what you need today.
Feel like you actually know how to be pregnant
There can be a sense, especially at the beginning, that everyone else already knows what pregnancy is supposed to look like.
There seems to be a particular way to be pregnant, prepare for birth and eventually become a parent. As though pregnancy comes with an identity you’re supposed to step into.
But part of these first months is finding out who you are in pregnancy.
What matters to you. How you make decisions. Whose voices you want in your ear. What you need from the people around you. How you feel about your changing body. What you care about and what you really don’t.
You’ll learn a huge amount about pregnancy in this course. And you’ll start learning what being pregnant looks like for you.
Why I created this course
Most antenatal education starts when birth begins to feel close enough to prepare for.
But by then, you’ve already spent months learning what it means to be pregnant.
You’ve entered the maternity system. You’ve started hearing the language used around pregnancy and risk. You’ve seen who gets to give advice, what gets presented as routine and where decisions seem to sit. You’ve probably heard plenty of opinions about pregnancy, birth and parenting too.
All of that is already shaping how you understand pregnancy.
I’ve spent more than a decade teaching antenatal education, and I know there is a whole layer of learning — and sometimes unlearning — that needs to happen before birth preparation can really make a difference.
Understanding your body. Understanding the system you’re having your baby in. Realising that recommendations aren’t instructions. Working out how you make decisions, whose voices you value and what matters to you.
That learning doesn’t belong at the end of pregnancy. It starts here.
That’s why I created the First Trimester Course in 2024: to start your antenatal education at the beginning.
Ready to start your antenatal education?
Get immediate access to the complete CubCare First Trimester Course for £29, including the weekly First Trimester Q&A.
Start wherever you are in your first trimester, work through it at your own pace and come back to it whenever something becomes relevant. And when a question comes up that the course hasn’t answered, submit it for the next Q&A.
CubCare First trimester course FAQs
Continue your journey
Whether you’re looking for more personalised support or want to understand the thinking behind this course, these are the next places to explore.
- From Two Lines™ – Discover the philosophy behind everything I teach.
- From Two Lines™ Support – One-to-one continuity from the moment you know you’re pregnant.
- Birth Doula Support – Continuous support throughout pregnancy, birth and the early weeks afterwards.
- First Trimester Hub – Evidence-based articles answering common questions about early pregnancy.
- Going on holiday in the first trimester – Got a holiday booked? What to know about flying, hot weather, food, swimming and travelling abroad in early pregnancy.
- When should you tell people you’re pregnant? – Decide who you want beside you during the weeks ahead.
Still trying to work out what’s normal?
If your symptoms are your only reference point, everything feels uncertain. These are some of the moments that bring people here:
Symptoms disappeared overnight at 6–8 weeks
Understanding why your body feels like this is the first step to easing it — not just stretching through it.
Early pregnancy bloating — why you feel so big so early
That heavy, stretched feeling that seems out of proportion — and makes you question what’s going on
Early pregnancy and not sure what’s normal?
When nothing quite matches what you expected, and you’re not sure what’s normal for you
If this is how you’re trying to understand your pregnancy — through symptoms alone — it keeps looping like this.
The First Trimester Course gives you something more stable to work from from the start, so you’re not constantly second guessing what’s happening.