5 reasons to write a birth plan (and 1 reason not to!)
Why would you plan something that probably won’t go to plan?
The same reason you think about your journey to the airport for your Bank Holiday flight departure… because in doing it you think it all through and make it work for you.
Do I need to write a birth plan?
No-one, not me, not your midwife, not the best obstetrician in the country, will be able to tell you how your labour and birth will pan out. Birth is unknowable and unpredictable and for so many people this is a reason not to write a plan.
They don’t want to feel the disappointment of what they planned for the birth of their baby not happening. I hear “I’d like a drug free waterbirth, but also I will just go with the flow and take whatever comes” at Bump Brunches and reflectively at postnatal groups like The Nest all of the time.
And I agree with that: writing a birth plan because you have a single clear vision of how you want your labour to progress and your baby to enter the world, is absolutely NOT a reason to write a birth plan; this is destined to fail and will more than likely lead to disappointment.
But, neither is this single consequence a reason not to write a birth plan at all…
Why should I write a birth plan?
Hear me out here … what if NOT writing a birth plan led you down those paths, particularly the less favourable and more traumatic ones?
What if writing one could help to create a better birth for you and your baby?
Humans are a species that like control: when we understand a situation, and our own position in it, we feel strong and powerful. And in a weird kind of way, refusing to write a plan commits us to ‘going with the flow’ of events which creates a sort of power; it suggests we’re happy to go with the course of events that we end up travelling on… that we consent to the universe taking us on a wild ride.
But apart from going to Alton Towers occasionally, humans aren’t known for their love of being out of control or on a wild ride. We feel happiest, calmest and most confident when we have some sort of grounding element, some way of knowing where our power lies and where we sit in the grand scheme of things.
And that is why birth plans were first introduced.
Birth plans first popped up in the 1980s as a part of childbirth education classes, with the aim of being ‘a device for women to use as a springboard to launch conversations with health-care providers and to shed light on areas where choice of interventions in labour could be negotiated.’ This was never meant to be a simple box ticking exercise, or a unrealistic dream document that would fail: the intention was always for birth plans to help families to engage with their experience of birth, not necessarily beyond, but around, the medical framework of maternity care.
And, as the research suggests, it worked!
93% of women who wrote a birth plan felt it improved their understanding of labour and birth. (Moore & Hopper 1995)
92% believed that they were better able to express their wishes through a birth plan (Moore & Hopper 1995)
⅔ of participants found their birth plan to be beneficial (Brown & Lumley, 1998)
Participants in the study said they were more satisfied with pain control during labour (Brown & Lumley, 1998)
Will making a birth plan make my plan for birth happen?
No, not necessarily. And these studies, for all their overwhelming positive statistics don’t ignore that either…
What’s interesting is that these studies don’t sugar coat the reality: around half of the participants in the Whitford & Hillan (1998) study stated that their birth plans didn’t influence the outcome of their birth but this was due to it not being read properly by health care professionals caring for them, not that the document was useless. But really interestingly, of that half, 76% said that they’d still create a birth plan for a subsequent baby.
So what can we conclude here? Well, its absolutely reasonable to see that that creating birth plans are an overwhelmingly positive thing when you’re looking at how parents-to-be engage with and experience the birth of their babies.
But it’s also important to conclude that this positivity doesn’t come from the outcome of the birth itself; the value of a birth plan is in its creation. It’s in the research, the thinking, the preparing, the visualising and the communication with your birth team. THIS is where a birth plan is so valuable and when we approach the writing of one with that mindset, we enter a whole new ball game in terms of birth…
5 reasons to write a birth plan…
Can a birth plan control or predict how birth goes? No, absolutely not. There are too many variables and external factors at play to be sure of anything.
But with the right frame of mind, and the right independent support, a birth plan can help you to get a better birth experience…
Researching your birth plan will allow you to truly inform yourself. By exploring the choices you have independently, you will be able to decide how you feel about something’s benefits and risks objectively, free of bias and persuasion.
Mulling over your birth choices will connect with your absolute non-negotiables. Away from the noise of social media, your friends and your Aunty Susan, you can create a birth plan that really serves you and your comfort zones.
Your birth plan gives you power. By recording your wishes (and signing it!) you are creating a clear indication of what you are willing to accept, want to discuss, or will decline from medical professionals. This is invaluable in the emotional heat of the birth space!
A birth plan gives your care-givers a sense of who you are; midwives and obstetricians, witness pregnancies and birth every day - it’s only natural that it may become a bit run of the mill. By creating a birth plan that includes details about you, your personality, your hopes and fears etc, you give them something to go off to help serve you as an individual.
Birth plans help to set the tone of the room: handing your birth team a document that is well researched, personalised and legalised with a consenting signature, you’re sending very clear messages about the faith you have in yourself, your knowledge and the system you wish to support you.
Knowing all of this, doesn’t really take away the overwhelming nature of a birth plan: there is a lot to know and a lot we can’t control.
However, writing your birth plan can so much more manageable and doable when you have someone to hold your hand through the process, walk you through the choices with evidence-based information, an independent and unbiased perspective. And that’s why I offer birth planning workshops.
Delivered in groups or privately, face-to-face or online, over the course of 2.5 hour workshops, I will give you the information, tools and confidence to create a powerful birth plan that serves you, and will help you on the way to creating a positive birth experience.
