Birth Plan basics for the first time mom. Why a Birth Plan is important and how a Birth Plan can help mothers avoid panic and have a satisfying birth.
As a first-time mom, birth is intimidating! From the horror stories of the emergency C-sections, failed epidurals, and healthcare providers forcing invasive tests to positive freebirth stories flooding YouTube and reddit threads. First time moms are inundated with labor expectations and fears.
Birth Plans are flaunted as the key to getting the birth you want. While they can help with certain things, which I’ll talk about in a minute, a Birth Plan doesn’t guarantee anything. Just because you say in your birth plan that you want no pain medication, that doesn’t mean that you will be denied pain meds if you request them. To understand why a Birth Plan is important, you need a little history lesson.
A Brief History of Birth
In the early 1900’s, male obstetricians led a progressive movement to remove the pain of childbirth. The method they used was to use anesthetic and amnesiac drugs to get women to sleep through childbirth and forget the whole experience. Basically, women would feel contractions start, they would go to their OB, their OB would put them to sleep and when they woke up their baby would be born. This form of childbirth was called Twilight Sleep. (Cartwright, 2018)
In the late 19th century when medicine was seeing accelerated advancements and pain medication was becoming popularized, birth became medicalized in a way it had never been before. Before this, women were supported by other women throughout childbirth. They knew what to expect! Women watched their sisters, mothers, and friends go through childbirth.
When birth was taken over by money- and control-hungry male obstetricians, the woman-to-woman birth tradition was made nearly obsolete in the western world. Women began to fear birth and the pain associated. Until very recently, women opted to let their medical provider make all decisions regarding their labor and delivery.
Unfortunately, this led to a steep increase in birth interventions and unnecessary harm to women and babies. After generations of medical birth trauma, women have begun taking their birth into their own hands again. This is where the Birth Plan comes in.
The Birth Plan
Your Birth Plan is a powerful tool for you, your birth partner, and your medical team. Here are three ways Birth Plans are valuable:
1. Your Birth Plan helps you prepare.
Unless you have had a front row seat to birth before, the decisions can be overwhelming. Making the important decisions when you’re in labor would cause stress and confusion. That is NOT what you need when you’re pushing out a baby!
A Birth Plan lets you write out the important decisions before hand. For example, here are some common things women put in their birth plan regarding an epidural:
*I want an epidural as soon as possible
*I only want an epidural if I ask for one
*I want to try Nitrous Oxide before trying an epidural
For a comprehensive Birth Plan guide, click here. Having these baseline desires in your Birth Pan allows your support person to advocate for you and answer these simple but important questions for you if asked by medical staff.
2. Birth Plans communicate values and preferences.
Research shows that the top predictors of whether or not a woman will be satisfied by their birth experience are personal control and expectations being met (Goodman, 2004). In my experience, women don’t need everything to go perfectly to come out of Birth without trauma. What they need is to be heard and have their values respected regardless of how perfect their birth goes.
Values dictate many things in labor and delivery. Here are some examples:
- a religion that doesn’t permit men in the delivery room or has ceremonies during labor or immediately postpartum
- Christian music playing or scripture taped to the wall
- the value of doing things as naturally as possible
- breastfeeding immediately postpartum
Some other preferences that may be apart from values include:
- a sexual assault victim requesting additional privacy, only females in the room, or local numbing
- a woman of color requesting a primary nurse who shares her race
While the medical community often likes to treat the mother and baby like patients, the birth process is highly spiritual, powerful, intimate, personal, and vulnerable. Whether a person’s values and preferences are heard and prioritized throughout the birth process determines how that baby and mother begin their new journey together. Birth Plans make values known and enable your support person to advocate for you.
3. Birth Plans outline backup plans.
A good Birth Plan won’t just have the best case scenario outlined. It will also have Plan B, C, and D. If the woman’s ideal birth scenario becomes unattainable either because of medical necessity or exhaustion, a Birth Plan should tell the provider what you are and are not okay with. Having backup plans allows the woman control even if things don’t go to plan.
For example, I have a friend who has had three C-sections and wanted to have a vaginal birth for her fourth child. VBACs (vaginal birth after cesarian) can be dangerous due to the scar tissue on the uterus. She communicated with her provider early on in the pregnancy about her desire for a VBAC. She agreed to an induction and epidural in case of emergency c-section. She ended up vaginally birthing a beautiful, healthy baby boy the day before her scheduled induction.
She knew what she wanted, communicated with her care team, and was able to have her ideal birth. Knowing that she had a plan B and C gave her peace of mind that her team was prepared for whatever happened. Backup plans benefit the mother and baby even if they’re not used.
Most care providers and facilities go through the basics of your birth plan during a prenatal appointment (usually around 30 weeks). Normally these records are available to whoever is on duty when your baby comes. However, it’s best to have a hard copy of your Birth Plan in your hospital bag and in your support person’s wallet. For a comprehensive list of birth bag essentials, see this blog post.
Cartwright, Jessica, “Twilight Sleep“. Embryo Project Encyclopedia ( 2018-05-16 ). ISSN: 1940-5030 https://hdl.handle.net/10776/13061
Goodman, P., Mackey, M.C. and Tavakoli, A.S. (2004) ‘Factors related to childbirth satisfaction’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 46(2), pp. 212–219. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2648.2003.02981.x.