By Katie Moore
Some expectant mothers daydream about their delivery day. These mothers have made informed decisions about the childbirth method they’ve chosen and feel ready for the big day. They’ve also created a birthing plan that spells out exactly how the delivery should go.
One of the most important first steps in a woman’s pregnancy is to choose a doctor that she is comfortable working with throughout her term. An expectant mother can visit the different hospitals and birthing centers available to her and speak to the doctors and staff there to help decide whom she would like to work with. From there, the doctor can help a mother tailor a birth plan to suit her.
Although it is a great idea to consider the perfect childbirth scenario, one problem exists with this idealistic mindset; babies generally cannot be expected to follow a plan. Many times babies are unpredictable in their growth and behavior even before they take their first breaths. Emergency situations sometimes arise, and a mother’s birthing plan may be tossed out the window. A mom may have her heart set on having a non-medicated, natural childbirth but end up having a cesarean section instead.
For this reason, mothers should consider all of the possibilities when writing out her birth plan. Of course, no mother plans on emergency situations, but remembering to be flexible in the delivery room will help expedite a healthy delivery. Whether a mother gets to follow through on her dream natural birth, gets to benefit from her choice of pain management medicine or has to have the birthing plan scrapped in the delivery room, remembering that having a healthy baby at the end of delivery is the main goal for everyone involved can be comforting to a mother in the throes of labor.
A mother should keep her birth plan to a clear and concise one page outline of how she would prefer her delivery scenario play out. There are many birthing options available to women today, such as a hospital birth, a water birth or at-home birth, so there can be different considerations and requests made for the situation. Specifying what pain management methods a mother would like to utilize, as well as the atmosphere she would like the delivery room to feel like are all requests that can be found on the birth plan.
The decisions leading up to the birth are not the only important ones to be made by a mother; planning for medical options after birth are important as well. If a boy is expected, circumcision is an option for his future health. Another future health consideration is cord blood banking. A process that can be used for either sex, cord blood banking is where the umbilical cord blood is collected immediately after the baby is delivered and sent off to a private facility to be stored. The benefit of this process is that the cord blood can potentially be used to help treat certain medical conditions.
By creating a birthing plan that allows some flexibility for emergencies, mothers can have confidence that delivery day will end with a healthy infant and a healthy mother. No one can plan for every situation, but simply considering the possibilities will allow mothers to mentally be prepared for whatever comes.
Katie Moore is a Mommy Blogger and Stay-at-Home Mother of one residing in North Carolina