Writing a birth plan has become a bit controversial…Some believe it sets you up for disappointment and others think it’s hugely beneficial for their whole childbirth experience. So let’s talk about what a birth plan template is, and how to make a birth plan. Plus, the Birthing Balance Birth Plan Free Template includes a birth plan with c section if that is a possible birth route you’re taking!
What Are Birth Plans?
If you’re new to the idea of a birth plan you may be thinking “what are birth plans?” So, birth plans are simple! They are a way to clearly communicate your labor and birth wishes to your maternity care provider, which usually consists of your preferences for labor, childbirth, and recovery.
Filling out this birth plan template is an essential step to having a birth experience you love, no matter how it goes! It also ensures you effectively communicate and spark crucial conversations between you and your provider.
How to Make a Birth Plan?
By using the Birthing Balance Birth Plan Free Template, your birth options are listed out for you to look into! These options include the choices you get to make before or during your labor, childbirth, and postpartum recovery while you’re at your place of birth (hospital, birth center, or your home birth).
Some examples of these options can include pain management options such as intermittent auscultation (intermittent fetal heart rate monitoring, instead of continuous with the belly bands) for the ability to move and cope for labor contractions, an epidural, nitrous oxide, etc.
Or, for the birth of your placenta, you can choose if you prefer the midwife or OB to do ‘active management’ with a shot of postpartum Pitocin and umbilical cord traction, or if you’d like to birth your placenta naturally unless there is a medical emergency.
How to Make a Birth Plan: Why a Birth Plan is Important
When writing a birth plan, you’ll learn so much about birth itself!
You’ll also learn that birth has so many variables and alternatives, and you’ll get to research and talk to your healthcare provider about them before your labor and birth. This will make you much more knowledgeable going into your experience!
By filling out a birth plan template and communicating it with your OB or midwife, you can ensure that they will accommodate everything you decided you want for your labor and birth.
For example, some birthing positions some hospitals won’t allow. So if you really want to give birth standing up, but your hospital doesn’t allow it, that would be beneficial to figure out before your labor and birth.
By using a birth plan like this one below, you have options laid out for you to look more into before labor begins. (link early labor blog post) You can talk about these options with your midwife or OB, doula, childbirth educator, etc., for more guidance as well, which ultimately ensures you’re educated and prepared to go into labor.
If you’d like this birth plan template, fill out the pop-up on my website! The Birthing Balance Birth Plan will show you all the options you can learn about in The Balanced Birth Course (Coming soon!), then the last page of the birth plan provides a template to write out your wishes in a list format so that there’s nothing written on your birth plan that you do not want!
Are Birth Plans Necessary?
Some maternity providers feel worried that if you make a birth plan, you’ll be disappointed if something occurs that may cause your plan to change. However, a good maternity practitioner will advise you to take a childbirth class and hire a doula to help you become educated and empowered about different possibilities and options during your birth experience to help you.
The truth is, if you aren’t practical about your birth plan, then it can hurt you. For example, if you want to eat during labor and know it’s best for you but the hospital you’re planning to give birth at never allows this, then having this as a part of your birth plan can cause issues for you.
Still, I believe birth plans are necessary no matter what type of birth you desire! Whether you want an unmedicated birth, epidural, induced labor, or an elective cesarean. Keep in mind, we set goals for many other areas in our lives that could also disappoint us. For example, a partner, what school we want to get into, the job we want to get, etc. But does this mean we don’t plan, learn, and prepare for these things? Of course not!
We set dreams and expectations in so many parts of our lives, and birth should be no different!
What Makes a Woman’s Birth Experience Positive?
As I mentioned above, a birth plan is also beneficial for communication between your provider and yourself.
The most valuable thing you will get from writing a birth plan is that you will (or should) feel heard during labor.
If you ask women whether they had a positive or negative birth experience, you will notice that it often has very little to do with how closely their labor and delivery followed their birth plan. It mostly concerns whether they felt heard during their labor, had decision-making power, and felt supported during their labor and birth experience.
I always told people that my birth experience was overall more negative precisely because I never felt heard, I never felt like I had decision-making power, and I did not feel supported throughout my whole labor. To read my full labor and delivery story with my daughter, who had fetal growth restriction, click here!
My labor and delivery experience was very different than I imagined and hoped it would be, but I’m so excited to write a birth plan for my next baby and for things to be very different next time, hopefully!
To ensure my healthcare providers will treat me and make me feel much better next time, I plan to avoid a hospital birth with an OB unless it’s necessary. This is because I had my daughter at a hospital frequently referred to as the best hospital for labor and delivery by many other mamas I know. Still, I had such a negative experience with the providers. (This doesn’t mean this is what I believe everyone should want to do).
Having both your birth plan and great healthcare providers will ensure a very high chance of you having a positive birth experience!
How to Make a Birth Plan: Template Bonus Tips
Birth plan template tip #1: Create more than one birth plan!
You can even create more than one birth plan if you’d like to plan out a couple of different scenarios. This can be beneficial because you can be mentally prepared and have more control if things don’t go your most preferred way. Making a couple or a few can provide you with different choices and options for many routes of childbirth.
Birth plan template tip #2: If your midwife or OB might not be the one at your birth…
Often in a large practice, your provider wont be the practitioner at your birth. With this, I recommend you bring two copies of your birth plan to one of your appointments and have your provider sign them.
Next, take one of them with you to the hospital or birth center, and have your provider put the other one in your chart. This way, if your practitioner isn’t at your birth and someone you don’t know has a problem with something on your plan, you can pull out your signed plan and say, “My practitioner and I discussed this, and as long as there is not a medical emergency, I will be sticking to my choices listed in my birth plan. There’s an additional signed copy in my chart as well.”
This can help you avoid confrontation and stick to what you and your provider discussed over the course of your pregnancy and honor your birth choices!
Is a Birth Plan a Legal Document?
If (and hopefully when) your birth plan is added to your medical chart, it becomes a legal document. Still, this doesn’t guarantee that everything in your birth plan will happen.
Furthermore, a birth plan is not a binding agreement. If a different intervention is needed that is not on the birth plan, you may change your mind and choose it, or your medical team can still overrule your birth plan at any point they find necessary without breaking a law. Even though, the decision should always be yours and you should always be asked for your consent before any intervention is done.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen and this is one major reason I highly recommend hiring a birth doula!
Keep This in Mind When Writing Your Birth Plan…
The importance of having the best childbirth course and making a birth plan is to ensure you are informed and confident, so that no matter what happens, you feel like you are in control. Ultimately, this is the importance of making a birth plan and childbirth education.
You got this, mama!
Remember, if you have any questions or comments, you can send me a message on my contact page, Instagram, or when you sign up for the email list (to your right!), you can continuously communicate with me whenever you’d like!
Talk soon, mama!
Questions or Comments on How to Make a Birth Plan?
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below👇🏻
Talk soon, mama!
– Katelyn Lauren
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DISCLAIMER: This post is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding you or your baby’s health. Please read my Medical Disclaimer for more info
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