How to Build a Better Birth Plan

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.

This is your birth -- so your birth plan needs to make that clear. Set out your expectations for how the hospital and its staff should behave, but don't stop there.

What Are You Going to Do?

Women who attend childbirth classes tend to be better prepared for labor and birth than those who do not. But women who attend classes that teach them how to work with labor are those who do the very best during their baby's birth.

You're preparing carefully for your child's birth and want to have the best experience for the both of you. You need to let your medical team know this! Devote a section of your birth plan to detailing how you're planning to cope with labor. If you and your partner have practiced labor relaxation techniques, give a few sentences detailing that. If you've planned to use a birth ball, walking, showering, or a labor tub, indicate that in your birth plan.

Writing out that you have practiced how to handle labor and that you and your birth partner are committed to it goes a long way towards showing your team that you're serious about your birth plan. They know that you're not just going to leave them to try and deal with you getting out of control. Instead, you're at the head of your experience. You're taking solid steps to making sure you and your baby get the birth you both desire.

Birth Skills

How do you know what to put down in your "action" section of the birth plan? Like I noted above, you want to put down any techniques you're planning on using. The best thing to put in this section is your birth skills. These are skills that you can use to really work through labor. These skills go beyond simply reading about pregnancy and birth. Knowing the stages of labor does not prepare you to actually go through them. It doesn't ready you to work with your baby's efforts to be born.

Take the time during your pregnancy to learn birth skills that will really help you during labor. Relaxation and breathing can help you stay on top of contractions. They give your partner tools to help you stay in control. Birth skills can help you move a baby that seems "stuck" or get a labor moving after it has "stalled." You need birth skills. These are what you want to record on your birth plan to show your team that you not only know what you want -- you also know what you'll do during your birth.