You’re getting prepared for your upcoming labor and birth: filling out pre-registration papers, packing your bag, and thinking about your birth plan. How do you know just what to put in your birth plan? Is a birth plan just something you hand over to your doctors and nurses? Or should it be something more? In this article I’m going to show you why it should be something more.

It’s Your Birth

Birth plans have become extremely popular for the modern pregnant woman, but they have one big flaw. They only record what somebody else should (or should not be) doing! They record what procedures you’d like to have done, which ones you don’t want to have done, and what you want for your baby. These are great instructions and they can be helpful to your care providers and your partner. But they don’t give any information on what you’re going to be doing during labor.

Care providers can get really nervous when they get a demanding birth plan from a woman. Of course she wants “this and that,” but how will she act during labor? It’s important to remember that most women go into labor relatively unprepared. They expect that the hospital and staff will take care of things. They don’t know how to work with their bodies or their babies. So interventions, though they may not be desired, may end up being needed. The staff knows this. Read the rest of this entry »