Bridget's Pregnancy Blog

Last week, the birth center where I’m going to be having my baby gave me a birth plan questionnaire to fill out. The questionnaire they gave me was ten pages long!

For those who don’t know – a birth plan is basically a list of your preferences for birth. It covers things like whether you want pain relief medication or not, whether you prefer a vaginal birth or C-section, and who will be in the delivery room with you. Some hospitals and birth centers encourage the development of a birth plan to be shared with the doctor or midwife who will deliver the baby, while others don’t even mention the idea and just leave all choices up to the doctor in charge. My center is obviously one that encourages birth plans.

Before I got the questionnaire, I had been thinking a little about what to put in my birth plan. I had some idea of the basic things to be covered, but when I got my questionnaire, I immediately became curious about what else could be in there to take up ten pages.

After reading through the list, I found many things that I hadn’t really considered and might not have thought of without the questions, so I figured I’d share what it covered in case any of my readers are making up their own birth plan and might have overlooked something.

The first basic category was about the mother’s wishes for during labor. Some of the questions involved what I want to bring with me, such as music or DVDs, for the early part of labor that mostly involves a lot of sitting around. I have to decide whether I might want to do things like walk around, bring a light snack, or take a shower during that time.

As labor progresses, the questions move into things like the type of pain medication I want and whether I want to use breathing techniques or other methods to help ease labor pain and who will be there “coaching” me if I’m wanting that.

There’s a section on Cesareans and whether I want to go that route or what my wishes are if I end up needing an emergency C-section. This includes stuff like whether I want my partner in the room with me during a C-section and whether I’d prefer local or general anesthesia if it comes to that.

There’s a section on who will cut the umbilical cord, whether I’m planning on banking the blood and whether I want to wait until the cord has stopped pulsing before cutting the cord. There’s even a question about what to do with the placenta, since some people choose to take it home and others have the hospital dispose of it. (I’m checking off the one that says “I want to see the placenta first and then have the hospital dispose of it”- which Justin thinks is weird, but I was a biology major and when else am I going to get to take a look at a placenta?)

Another page involves post-birth questions, such as if the baby will be cleaned first or placed directly on me and a whole series of breastfeeding or formula feeding questions.

There are some questions about emergency situations, including requests that the father accompany the baby if an emergency occurs and the child has to go to ICU or be transported to another hospital. Not something anyone wants to think about, but I’m glad it was on there- just in case.

For the remainder of the list, I have to decide things like who will be allowed to come visit after the baby is born, whether I want hospital meals or to bring my own food and the level of involvement I want me and my partner to have with things like giving the baby baths.

All in all, the questions are pretty thorough and I’m glad I got the chance to think about all these things before the birth. I have been warned by pretty much everyone, though, that things never really go according to plan during birth. So I’m viewing the whole thing more as a loose set of guidelines.