The Importance of a Birth Plan Even When Plans Change

So often, people will say that there is no point in making a birth plan because labor and birth likely won’t go the way you have planned. However, there are many benefits to creating a birth plan, regardless of how closely your labor and birth actually end up following the plan. These benefits definitely make it worth your time to create a birth plan and share this with your care team. Let’s get into a few of the benefits of creating a birth plan.

First and foremost, when you are creating a birth plan, you have to be educated about the decisions you are making. Therefore, the process naturally creates opportunities for research and education to ensure that you feel like you are making the best decisions for yourself and your baby. This research includes looking into the preferences you want to list on your plan as well as the alternatives. This knowledge will be so valuable if your birth plan changes because you already know about the alternatives available to you, the risks and benefits, and your preferred next step if things don’t go to plan.

The process of creating a birth plan also offers more conversation starters between you and your provider. I can’t count the number of videos I have seen on social media that are making jokes about how short prenatal visits are during pregnancy, especially during the weekly ones towards the end. However, every visit with your provider is valuable time that can be spent talking through different scenarios, how they would handle a specific situation, their experience and philosophies about certain interventions, and more. Creating and presenting a birth plan to your provider when it’s completed will also help you to know if you and your provider are on the same page.

Having a birth plan and bringing that with you to the hospital can also help minimize interruptions while you are laboring. The staff won’t have to ask you questions about your preferences every step of the way. Instead, they can follow the items already listed on your plan and only interrupt when asking for consent to do the things on your plan, or to discuss why the plan may need to change depending what is happening in that moment. Being able to focus and protect your mental state while in labor is very important, and anything that can help protect this is worth it.

Being informed can reduce the risk of trauma. Even if your birth plan doesn’t goes as planned, having the knowledge that you accumulated along the way while creating your plan can make a big difference in how confident you feel while making decisions if things do change. Afterwards, you can feel peace in knowing that you made the right decisions for you and your baby, regardless of how you got there, all because you prepared beforehand.