Should Everyone Make a Birth Plan?

Written By OWN Your Pelvic Health

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to anything related to pregnancy, birth or parenting, but we do recommend that most people give serious thought to their wishes surrounding labor and delivery.

What is a Birth Plan?

Whether or not it results in a written plan, we see great benefit in considering your choices regarding your labor and birth. Many women don’t realize there are choices, or that they have any say in the matter. We sure didn’t know!

But the more we learned about the history, medicalization, and physiology of birth, the more we came to understand that there are choices. Of course- labor and birth cannot ever be truly planned, and each and every one is unique. There is a beauty to labor and birth in that no one ever knows what may happen.

Despite the unknown, there is value in considering what is important to you throughout the process, and if and how you want to remain in control of decisions as labor and birth progress (because most women feel very out of control during labor and birth).

So what are these choices we’re talking about and how do you make them? You can always find detailed birth plan templates on the internet through a quick Google search, but we’ve listed below some of the main ideas so as not to overwhelm you. Because we know pregnancy alone can feel pretty overwhelming.

What Should you Consider in Your Birth Plan?

We encourage you to really consider each of these bullet points. Write your answers down. Seriously, you think through things better when you physically write them.

  • Where would you like to give birth? At home? A birth center? A hospital? Why? Where will you feel safe and comfortable?

  • Who would you like to be your primary provider? An OBGYN? A midwife? Both? Is it important that they are male or female? Why?

  • Who would you like to be present for labor and birth? Your partner? Family? A doula? Friends? Why? Remember it’s your choice- you can kindly tell your mom or mother in law they can visit after if you won’t be able to relax with them there.

  • What happens if you go past 40 weeks? What does your provider recommend? Do you agree with their approach? What are the pros and cons?

  • How do you want to labor? At home for as long as possible or at the hospital as soon as you can? Do you want to be free to move? With medication or without? What are the pros and cons to medication? Do you want access to a tub? A birthing ball? Non medical pain management strategies?

  • Would you like to avoid medical interventions or are they okay? (We’re talking about C-sections, episiotomies and vacuum or forceps assisted births). If you’d like to avoid them, is your provider in agreement? Do hospital stats back up their response to you? What are steps you can take to avoid them? (*We’re not saying all medical interventions are avoidable- we love life saving medicine!)

  • When baby arrives, do you want immediate skin to skin contact or can the nurse take them? Do you want to delay cord clamping? Do you want to delay tests and vaccines?

  • If your baby needs to go to the NICU, do you want your partner to go with them or stay with you? If they go, do you have someone to stay with you?

  • Do you want to breastfeed? Can your baby have formula?

Birth Plan Resources

Believe it or not, this is mostly skimming the surface of everything you can think through regarding your birth experience. For each of these decisions, we want you to be armed with knowledge! Choose what is best for you with all possible information available to you. For this reason we’ve linked a few key articles and sites below. We also highly recommend that you work with a birth doula! Understand the questions to ask your doula and find a doula that fits your vibe.

Now, you’re not tied to whatever you wrote down. But hopefully it got the wheels turning to help you think about what’s important to you.

*Side note- When it comes to medical intervention, we want to be clear- medicine is a beautiful, wonderful, healing art. We both went into healthcare because we know that! But medical intervention is not always necessary. It’s meaningful to a lot of women to learn when medical intervention may be necessary, how to avoid intervention if it’s not their ideal plan, and how to have a sense of control when medical interventions are being discussed, planned and throughout the process. For example, if you’re planning for a spontaneous vaginal birth but end up needing a C-section to preserve the health of you and your baby, you can have a C-section plan. You can ask to view the procedure, to have your provider talk through the steps, to have immediate skin-to-skin contact- or none of those things.

Most importantly, YOU get to make the decisions! We know women who wholeheartedly trust their provider and want absolutely nothing to do with the decision making process. We know women who have opted for planned C-sections for any number of reasons- medically and non medically necessary. We know women who have had incredibly detailed birth plans and felt empowered by their experience. We know women who had birth plans where nothing went according to plan. And unfortunately we know women who didn’t know they had a choice and experienced a traumatic birth. The point is- there are a million and one ways to approach labor and birth. We are here to provide the information that can help you own it, to feel empowered and knowledgeable and confident in approaching your unique experience.

This post is obviously not all-encompassing. We recommend you take some time to talk with your partner, trusted support person, and/or doula as well as your provider about what’s important to you. The links below are a few resources we love to help understand the evidence behind various approaches to labor and birth. We know you’re busy and there is an endless to do list, but we don’t think you’ll regret giving this some thought.

And remember, no matter what happens, you are going to do exactly what is right for you and your baby. Even if it’s different from what you planned.

We love Evidence Based Birth Blogs. See the links below and browse through the rest of their articles!

Want to experience a pain-free pregnancy, easier birth, and quick postpartum recovery? Learn how we can help here.

Written By: Courtney Weber

OWN Your Pelvic Health
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