Homemaking · October 30 · 7 min read
A Short Birth Preference List
One page. The things that matter, and the sentence that says you will transfer. A twelve-page plan mostly starts an argument.
This is how our household cooks, washes, and thinks. It is not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for a midwife or a doctor.
This is not medical advice. These are thoughts from our own experience.
A birth plan works when it is short enough that a tired nurse or a backup midwife can read it. It fails when it is a manifesto. Write preferences, not commands. Then talk through them in pregnancy, when everyone is calm. The night of the birth is a poor time to introduce your philosophy.
“Sons are indeed a heritage from the LORD, children, a reward.”
What is worth the ink
- Who is in the room, and who is not. Name them.
- I want to move, and to labor in water if it is available.
- Please listen to the baby at intervals if this stays a normal labor, instead of a continuous monitor.
- Please do not break my water as a routine.
- Please do not cut an episiotomy as a routine. A tear that happens is not the same as a cut that was scheduled.
- If the baby is well, wait to clamp the cord until it has stopped pulsing.
- Put the baby on my chest at once, and leave the bath and the scale for later.
- If we need to transfer, we will. The preference list ends there.
Leave off the lectures about what hospitals always do. The person reading it may be the one who is about to help you. Tell your midwife the list in the third trimester and ask what she already does. Much of a natural list is her ordinary practice, and you will not need to argue for it. The items she hesitates on are the ones to discuss before labor.
Pack a hospital bag even if you are planning a home birth or a birth center. A change of clothes, a phone charger, a copy of this page, and the pediatrician's name. Hoping you will not need the bag is not the same as refusing to pack it.
