Should I make a birth plan?
- mountainbirthing
- Jan 13, 2023
- 3 min read
A birth plan is effectively a set of preferences for your birth environment, how you would like to be treated, pharmaceutical and other pain relief options and meeting your baby. It can be a written document, a list, a paragraph or two or a visual depiction of your choices.
I've seen and heard a few people saying - I'm not going to make a birth plan as what will happen will happen and I have no control over that. This is a really common response, and some of it is ultimately rooted in fear.
How many of us plan a trip and check the weather in advance? We're not in control of it, we certainly can't change it. Knowing the realm of possibilities is helpful to prepare anyway. You could decide that well if it rains on two of the days then we could always visit x and y attraction instead and that would also be ok. It means if and when it does rain then you already know what your preferences would be and it takes away some of the stress.
You do not have ultimate control over the turns that your birth takes but you do have control over so many more things that you might realise that can help make your birth a positive one. Many of your choices and preferences do contribute to potential future turns your birth could take and we cover these in detail as part of our antenatal course.
Your birth, however it unfolds, is uniquely yours and you can own it much more that you have been made to think.
Things to include in your birth plan that you might not have thought of:
A planned or emergency c-section birth preferences - this can include a whole host of things but having control over the level of lighting, music that is playing and things like having monitors placed on your back rather than chest for skin to skin with baby are all choices that you have. This way if you do end up choosing to consent to c-section then you have already envisioned what it would be like and know that you have already prepared choices.
Whether you would like care providers to ask you questions or direct them towards your birth partner in the first instance - if you're not asked lots of questions then you're more likely to stay in your 'zone' and let go
How you would like to be addressed, including your preferred pronouns clearly can make your whole birthing experience so much more comfortable for you.
Any relevant details about you, for instance if you suffer with anxiety, have experienced trauma or have any phobias (to be covered in a future post)
Who you would prefer to catch the baby - this is the fun one! You can absolutely specify a preference to be the one to catch baby should this be an option. Or if you couldn't imagine anything worse then say so!
Whether you would like to be offered pharmaceutical pain relief and if so what your preferences would be of the drugs available. This for me was really important. I requested not to have any drugs offered to me unless I asked - I knew that if someone offered me pain relief I would immediately assume that they felt I wasn't coping and my brain would go into overdrive.
There's so much more that could be included here and we cover these in more detail in our 1:1 courses. Find out more here.
The process of building a birth plan can be really exciting and useful tool to think about the potential routes your birth could take in advance. Crafting this together as a birth team is so important.
You may have the most beautiful birth plan that you have poured over for hours....then on the day you realise that you have completely different preferences. That's absolutely fine - throw it in the bin if you need to - they are just preferences after all and they are entirely yours.
Birth partners. Your job is to wave this document around and in the face of anyone you come into contact with as part of the birth process. We can't expect anyone to take into account our preferences if they don't know what they are.
Our maternity system in the UK is struggling and midwives are under increasing pressure, they are busy but ultimately they want you to have the birth that you want and to have a positive experience. If this means that birth partners need to be pushy, need to do lots of document waving and pointing out preferences then lets absolutely do that.
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