The REAL purpose of a birth plan

Writing a birth plan is not about trying to control your birth. The real reason you need a birth plan is because the very process of writing one is actually a tool to motivate you to get educated about your birth options.

Writing a plan will inevitably prompt you to think of questions to ask your medical provider and can be a way to get a gut check that you've hired the right person to support you at your birth.

The process of writing a birth plan is about creating a vision for your birth, but also learning not to hold onto it too tightly. Once you get started, you will quickly learn there are a lot of choices that you will have to make during your birth and not all of them you can control. However, you do have agency over what you consent to and what you refuse to allow to happen to your body and to your baby's body.

As you write your birth plan, you're going to learn what aspects of birth you actually do have some control over and which aspects you don't. For example, you have complete control over who you decide to hire to be your medical provider for your birth but you don’t have control over when you go into labor. Sometimes things happen that are outside of your control, but knowing the difference between where you have agency and where you need some flexibility is really critical to being able to feel satisfied and empowered in your birth.

The more you learn, the more you're going to have questions for your medical provider about how they manage the different stages of labor and not all providers are the same. There is not a one size fits all procedure for birth. As you're going through the process of writing your birth plan, you might learn some things about yourself. For example, during the pushing stage, you might learn that one of the best ways to reduce the risk of a severe tear during pushing is to avoid pushing on your back. That might prompt you to go to your medical provider and them if they will allow you to push in a different position besides on your back. If the answer is “no” - and that is something that you feel passionate about - you are with the wrong provider. It is time to fire that provider and find someone new. It's really common to change your providers up until very late in pregnancy.

The exercise of writing a birth plan does take time and it's a document that will evolve as you learn.

My advice is to begin the process of writing your birth plan during your first trimester.

I know, I know it's sometimes the last thing you're thinking of when you're just feeling nauseous or tired. And I'm not saying that you have to have a set in stone document, but begin to start looking into what birth looks like and understanding the common interventions that might be offered to you and the benefits and risks of each doing. This will help you figure out which questions to ask your provider. And the sooner you can be more confident that you've hired the right provider, the easier it'll be for you throughout the rest of your pregnancy.

One of the hardest parts about writing a birth plan is just simply getting started. It can be intimidating to know what to say or what to put on or what it should look like, which is why I've created a free birth plan template that can download and have access to through Canva. Canva is a free platform that you can use to design, edit, and print out your own beautiful birth plan template that is concise and comprehensive and really super easy for your providers to scan through and read so that they like reading it as well.

Grab the template here.