Birth Plan
What have you put in your Birth Plan? Gee, there seems to be so many things each of us wants or doesn’t want for our baby’s birth. You, like me, know what we want at our baby’s birth. At least we have an image in our head about the ideal birth we’d like.
As we research Birth Plan templates and Birth Plan examples we sort of get an idea of what to say and how to say it. Birth is so complex really. There is planning the how and where, with whom and what.
Then as our birth unfolds we want different things at different times. Birth Plans have been used since the 1980s to give women a voice apart from the standards of care that your obstetrician, midwife or hospital feel are essential to safeguard you and your baby’s well being.
Your head spins. Should I put this or that into my Birth Plan? What do I do if my Birth Plan changes? How do I cope if I don’t get what I want? And I have no idea what my birth will be like so how can I plan?
And what we’re going to tell you is to make a second Birth Plan! Oh, no you cry, tearing out your hair. I’m having enough trouble with just one!
But your second Birth Plan is all about what skills you’ll use during your baby’s birth. Imagine yourself giving birth. Is that easy or hard to imagine something you can’t practice to and have no idea how it will unfold? But you can imagine yourself birthing in any situation imaginable and if you can see yourself using skills then you are one up on most women who never think about how they will manage, cope, behave, work through and deal with the birth as they experience it in any situation.
Birthing Better skills were developed by families for families as the foundation for their Skills-based Birth Plan. No kidding. We saw so many Birth Plans fail and none of us wanted a bad birth experience.
Skills-based Birth Plan is for you and your birth professionals … a guide to what skills you’ve learned, practiced and will use and want encouragement to use.
Thinking about these two Birth Plans is interesting. The Birth Plan of wants and don’t wants seem full of potential problems. WHAT IF I DON’T GET WHAT I WANT?
Your Skills-based Birth Plan however feels soothing. I KNOW HOW TO DO THIS.
Yes, that is the difference!
You do want to write a Birth Plan about what you want and don’t want. Your birth is important and you want your birth professional to know who you are and what you’d like at this important event.
You also want to write your Skills-based Birth Plan. You can use it as a reminder during your birth of the skills you’ve learned. Your birth professionals can use it as a way to encourage you to use skills if you momentarily forget. Your partner/other can use it to work more effectively with you as this unknowing experience becomes known as your birth unfolds.
Will you get everything you want and avoid everything you don’t want as written in your Birth Plan? Who knows until after the birth.
Will you use all the skills you’ve learned and written in your Skills-based Birth Plan? Who knows until after the birth.
But as you’re thinking of these two Birth Plans which one do you think is more likely to lead to you having a positive birth experience? Hoping what you want/don’t want eventuates? Or knowing how to give birth skillfully? We’re not stupid. We know the value of our own skills. No one told us until now that a Skills-based Birth Plan was important!
Is Birthing Better the only skills-based method? No, Lamaze, The Bradley Method, Hypno-birthing, Hypno-babies and Birthing Better are some of them. They all work well together and each has unique skills. That’s good. Giving birth is a BIG experience and the more skills you have the better you’ll adapt as your birth unfolds.
Now imagine yourself after your birth. How will you talk about your Birth Plan of wants and don’t wants? Will you tell people everything unfolded as you planned? Or will you tell people birth was nothing like what you imagined? Or felt disappointed by how your birth unfolded, how people behaved or treated you?
Imagine talking about your Skills-based Birth Plan and how skills carried you through all the sensations and emotions of that day!
Where does your power lie? In hoping others give you what you want or knowing you can birth well?