Some say that having a birth plan sets up unrealistic ideals for your births. And while if you have rigid expectations, that may be true. However, we feel that writing the birth plan isn’t what is important.
The most important part about the birth plan is learning your options associated with writing your plan.
We encourage our clients to look at the birth plan as a fluid document so as birth changes, the plan changes because you are so well versed in all of your options. Whatever happens, you feel confident about your options because you wrote your birth plan.
Our birth doulas will conduct two prenatal appointments with our clients to learn about their hopes and fears, and everything else in between. The first prenatal is the birth planning appointment where we will go over plan A, as well as Plan Z. Why? We want you to be prepared for everything that can happen. Furthermore, if we learn that there is something that you really don’t want, we can work with you to figure what should be or should not be done instead to hopefully avoid that event
Options During Birth
During that first prenatal appointment, as you and your partner are reading the 9 page birth plan document, you may feel overwhelmed, empowered, or a little bit of both.
Our goal is that you are able to learn how many choices and options you have with pregnancy, labor, delivery, and your postpartum period. Learning the options now make it easier to make decisions in the moment, much like your personal road map during birth.
Plus, when you have a doula present, we can be your external brain so you don’t have to remember what you wanted to do if X happened vs Y. Countless times we have had clients tell us “I didn’t even know that was an option!”, and that is exactly our goal with providing a sometimes overwhelming 9 page birth plan.
Educational Support from Your Birth Doulas
On top of empowering you to learn your options, we are also educating you about the various steps, procedures, and even lingo associated with pregnancy and birth. Especially immediately following the birth of your baby, there are many different procedures that are available to you and your baby, and they are sometimes a little confusing. We as doulas will work with you to learn about each step of the process so that you can either research the topic more, speak with your medical provider, or ask your friends and family for advice.
Birth Plan for Your Providers
We also provide a single one page document for you to give to your medical team. This one page document is short, sweet, and to the point. We encourage our clients to fill this out closer to the their estimated date of delivery so they are more well versed in what exactly they want, and even what they don’t want.
