Change the intention of your Birth Plan:
Nowhere in any Birth Plan are you asked what you’re going to do for yourself to prepare for the birth and while the birthing process is occurring. Birth Plans are like asking for money but being unwilling to do work ‘in kind’. If you do not include what you will do for yourself then you can hardly expect people to just ‘give’ you what you want. That’s selfish, unrealistic and you set yourself and others up for failure and set yourself up for shame, blame and guilt.
Any Birth Plan you have needs to include statements such as:
Pregnant women:
- I commit to using good breathing skills as a way to cope with labor pain.
- I will continue to use internal relaxation skills even when I don’t like the pain.
- I will communicate clearly either verbally or non-verbally with my partner, friend or relative so they know how best to help me.
Expectant fathers:
- I will learn the appropriate set of skills so I can really work with my partner as she gives birth.
- I will use my skills in every birth situation alongside my birth providers.
Together:
- We will work with our baby’s efforts to be born.
- We will continue to work together along side our birth provider and in whatever birth situation we have.
- We will continue to work with our skills even if our birth requires greatly increased medical intervention including a surgical birth.
Remember you’ll have one of three types of birth whether you plan them or not.
A ‘plan’ is really a passive set of organizational details in list form. However, childbirth is an activity means you have to take ‘actions’. Actions are what you do during an activity. Skills are how you do the actions.
Your strength during the whole birthing process will always lie in your ability to use your skills and create actions throughout this phenomenal experience, event or process because ‘plans’ have a huge ability to change. Remember the best laid plans of mice and men … and remember no one can plan or see the future; we can just plan for the future. Once the future becomes the present, then we are left with the actions of our decisions in life at every moment.
The use of your skills is what will get you through birth always feeling in control. You may not be able to control the actions of others or even your baby’s efforts to be born but you can always respond to those actions with your skills.
Actions (what you do) based on a good foundation of skills (how you do things) can be adapted to suit any situation at the moment. This means you can feel great about your management abilities, even if the events may be less then perfect or if you don’t like one moment of the experience or what is happening to you.