Birth Plans or Birth Wishes?
To birth plan or not to birth plan?
Birth plans or birth wishes???
I remember having a doula client when I first started who had ‘laminated” her birth plan and colour coded it. There were some negative comments from one of the midwives supporting her and I remember levelling my gaze on her and she went very quiet. Similarly she had a comment to make when transferring in from a successful Homebirth due to a retained placenta and the comment was “it’s a hypnobirthing patient” said in such a derogatory tone and once again I just levelled my gaze at her and she dropped her eyes knowing she had been overheard. Let’s just say that anytime that particular midwife came into a clients home I was on my guard and very protective of the clients space.
Who cares how you present your birth wishes … they are your thoughts on how you would like to journey to meet your baby and welcome them into your loving arms. This should be read and your choices acknowledged.
It shows what is important to you and, regardless of how your baby is born, there will be elements that can be transferred from ideal birth to actual birth, enabling you to feel that you have been listened to and heard!
Taking the time to write it can also help you to consolidate everything you have read and put it in to context.
Try the exercise on the following page and fill in all the things you have read about which you think you’ll find useful before, during and after your labour. This will then help you to formulate your ideas.
Some examples might include:
Before the birth
Listen to my downloads
Plan my nest
Excited Mama
Watch box sets on TV
The birth
Instinctive pushing
After the birth
Lots of cuddles
When writing your goals, it is important to focus on what you want to feel about the birth when you look back at it, rather than having a specific type of birth or giving birth in a specific place. That way, if things should go in a different direction from what you had originally planned, you can still, rightfully, feel like you smashed it!
Here are some resources you may find helpful when considering what you would like.
Sample Birth Wishes (word written document)
Sample Birth Wishes (visual)
The Positive Birth Book have a great resource with the Visual Birth Plan
visual_birth_plan_icons_download
Visual Birth Wishes icons
right click to save these to your device:
A few examples of what these can look like:
