So Is It Time To Start The Birth Plan Yet?
Hello! First off, thanks for being here with me and thank you for your excitement and eagerness to get the birth plan started. This is one of the most common questions I used to get in the early days of working together so figured I’d make a video and give you a timeline of what I suggest and of course why I recommend it.
So, if you are gestationally are between 1 and 30 weeks pregnant, no I do not recommend that you start doing birth planning. No?! What?! Really?!?! I know! Maybe a little different than what you’d expect from a doula who’s job largely revolves around preparing for birth but *shrug* here we are. So why? From 0-30 weeks, I think the priorities should be: 1. Enjoying the pregnancy 2. Focusing on the other non-birth stuff that helps make birth successful 3. Passively collecting information and actively creating a list of questions. Let’s go through those one by one.
First one, enjoying the pregnancy. This is always the priority, but I have it as number one because it doesn’t seem to be number one in any other list when it comes to any kind of birth or postpartum prep. This is especially true if the first trimester was particularly difficult. Whether it was nausea, fatigue, stress around any testing, or other stuff going on in life, I think it’s amazing if the second trimester could be a bit of an exhale. This is the time to simply just be – no where to be, but here. You will get information later on in the pregnancy around gestational diabetes, baby’s position, potential induction that would affect the birth plan anyway so why spend potentially 20+ weeks ruminating over things when we don’t even know some of these key factors. If you do anything in weeks 0-30, just let it be less. And if you never even think about a birth plan, then that’s perfectly fine and just what the doula ordered. But do you need more reasons? Let’s keep it rolling.
Reason two, focusing on the other non-birth stuff that helps make birth successful. If we relate this to planning something else, like a marathon, then planning our rest stops and the way we want the race to feel, and imagining our pace and how we want our team to support us, that’s all great, but we have to put in the work to make that a reality. And what kind of work is that? Emotional and mental work, and spiritual work if you’re into that. I don’t think being an athlete or being super flexible or anything like that gives someone an advantage during birth which is why I don’t say physical prep, and I also think a pregnant body is doing enough and doing it perfectly that we don’t need to be hammering it constantly to do and be better. And I think doing the physical stuff sometimes keeps people either too busy to do the real work and maybe falsely confident that they’re prepared because they’ve done a lot. The work when it comes to birth and beyond, aka the entirety of parenthood, is emotional and mental. Am I clear? Am I regulated? Am I calm? Am I focused? Do I know what I’m feeling? Do I know where that feeling is in my body? Do I know how to communicate my needs? Do I know how to ask for help? Do I know how to ask someone to stop helping? Do I trust myself? Can I trust myself more? What’s mine to carry? And what’s not? Therapy is my number one favourite way to do this, meditation is my number two, and dealer’s choice is number three. I think if we spent as much time on our mental and emotional health and well-being as we did on birth plans and registry and baby products, I think our experiences with pregnancy, birth and postpartum would be very different and different in a good way and that’s exactly what I would want for you. So every time you want to reach something about a birth plan or get eager to get planning, maybe try and think about what feeling you’re feeling or thought you’re thinking and work on that versus making it go away with something external. Just a thought. *Wink*. One more reason?
So, you know how they say hindsight is 20/20? Or sometimes how we can be so busy packing our luggage that we miss the flight? That’s kind of the energy I feel like sometimes we bring to birth planning. We miss the forest for the trees and in the intense focus of getting the plans done, we miss the opportunity for curiosity. The visual is this: we’re going to go to a new restaurant. We can either read all the reviews and make a prejudgement of whether or not we like this restaurant, we can look at a menu that includes what we think will be offered and decide exactly what we want and how we want it, and go in with guns blazing and our order written down ready to show it to the staff. OR, or, we can be curious. We can read reviews and ask those people some questions to figure out why they felt that way, if they could have done everything differently, how they prepared for the restaurant, and what they’d do differently next time. Fact find. Passively, listening to the information but not taking it as the word. You can then also write down some questions that you want to ask to your server once you arrive. You also happen to have a food doula who knows the restaurant very very well that you can ask questions too. And then on the way to the restaurant, we’re going to take it easy. We’re going to make sure we’re well-rested, emotionally taken care of, in a good headspace to go to the restaurant the best we can. Upon arrival, we have an idea of what we’d like for dinner based on our passive fact-finding so far, maybe something vegetarian or with lots of greens or pasta-heavy like other people have enjoyed, but we’re open to the vibe. We’re open to how we’re feeling, what our server is recommending, what we’re seeing and smelling and sensing in the moment. Then we sit down and take a look at the menu. After talking to people, we know why some of those reviews were disgruntled – they thought because they were going to an Italian restaurant that they could order pizza but the menu is totally different than we expected, but that’s okay. We remember our preferences – greens, vegetarian, pasta – and also remember that the chef in the kitchen is really the one who’s the boss anyway so let’s take a big breath. What looks good? What feels good? How can we make this the best dining experience ever? Because look around – this place is actually amazing. A once-in-a-lifetime experience. So let’s ask those questions now. Let’s call over the server, let’s sit with the doula, and go through your questions and share your preferences. And likely, when we chat everything through, we can probably whip something up that’s pretty special and pretty amazing and pretty darn tasty.
TL;DR. Use the first 30, really 37 weeks, to gather information, not make decisions. Around week 30, we start to intentionally ask questions and form some preferences and talk with our support team. Once we have all of the information, we’re sitting in the restaurant, we have all the answers we need about OUR situation right NOW, that’s the time to place an order. Before that, passively gather and ask questions and be open and curious and nooo pressure.
Okay! Hopefully that is helpful! If you have any questions, please text or email me, and remember to please write down lots of questions as you see and read things over the next weeks or months.
All my love and chat soon! x
Hello! First off, thanks for being here with me and thank you for your excitement and eagerness to get the birth plan started. This is one of the most common questions I used to get in the early days of working together so figured I’d make a video and give you a timeline of what I suggest and of course why I recommend it.
So, if you are gestationally are between 1 and 30 weeks pregnant, no I do not recommend that you start doing birth planning. No?! What?! Really?!?! I know! Maybe a little different than what you’d expect from a doula who’s job largely revolves around preparing for birth but *shrug* here we are. So why? From 0-30 weeks, I think the priorities should be: 1. Enjoying the pregnancy 2. Focusing on the other non-birth stuff that helps make birth successful 3. Passively collecting information and actively creating a list of questions. Let’s go through those one by one.
First one, enjoying the pregnancy. This is always the priority, but I have it as number one because it doesn’t seem to be number one in any other list when it comes to any kind of birth or postpartum prep. This is especially true if the first trimester was particularly difficult. Whether it was nausea, fatigue, stress around any testing, or other stuff going on in life, I think it’s amazing if the second trimester could be a bit of an exhale. This is the time to simply just be – no where to be, but here. You will get information later on in the pregnancy around gestational diabetes, baby’s position, potential induction that would affect the birth plan anyway so why spend potentially 20+ weeks ruminating over things when we don’t even know some of these key factors. If you do anything in weeks 0-30, just let it be less. And if you never even think about a birth plan, then that’s perfectly fine and just what the doula ordered. But do you need more reasons? Let’s keep it rolling.
Reason two, focusing on the other non-birth stuff that helps make birth successful. If we relate this to planning something else, like a marathon, then planning our rest stops and the way we want the race to feel, and imagining our pace and how we want our team to support us, that’s all great, but we have to put in the work to make that a reality. And what kind of work is that? Emotional and mental work, and spiritual work if you’re into that. I don’t think being an athlete or being super flexible or anything like that gives someone an advantage during birth which is why I don’t say physical prep, and I also think a pregnant body is doing enough and doing it perfectly that we don’t need to be hammering it constantly to do and be better. And I think doing the physical stuff sometimes keeps people either too busy to do the real work and maybe falsely confident that they’re prepared because they’ve done a lot. The work when it comes to birth and beyond, aka the entirety of parenthood, is emotional and mental. Am I clear? Am I regulated? Am I calm? Am I focused? Do I know what I’m feeling? Do I know where that feeling is in my body? Do I know how to communicate my needs? Do I know how to ask for help? Do I know how to ask someone to stop helping? Do I trust myself? Can I trust myself more? What’s mine to carry? And what’s not? Therapy is my number one favourite way to do this, meditation is my number two, and dealer’s choice is number three. I think if we spent as much time on our mental and emotional health and well-being as we did on birth plans and registry and baby products, I think our experiences with pregnancy, birth and postpartum would be very different and different in a good way and that’s exactly what I would want for you. So every time you want to reach something about a birth plan or get eager to get planning, maybe try and think about what feeling you’re feeling or thought you’re thinking and work on that versus making it go away with something external. Just a thought. *Wink*. One more reason?
So, you know how they say hindsight is 20/20? Or sometimes how we can be so busy packing our luggage that we miss the flight? That’s kind of the energy I feel like sometimes we bring to birth planning. We miss the forest for the trees and in the intense focus of getting the plans done, we miss the opportunity for curiosity. The visual is this: we’re going to go to a new restaurant. We can either read all the reviews and make a prejudgement of whether or not we like this restaurant, we can look at a menu that includes what we think will be offered and decide exactly what we want and how we want it, and go in with guns blazing and our order written down ready to show it to the staff. OR, or, we can be curious. We can read reviews and ask those people some questions to figure out why they felt that way, if they could have done everything differently, how they prepared for the restaurant, and what they’d do differently next time. Fact find. Passively, listening to the information but not taking it as the word. You can then also write down some questions that you want to ask to your server once you arrive. You also happen to have a food doula who knows the restaurant very very well that you can ask questions too. And then on the way to the restaurant, we’re going to take it easy. We’re going to make sure we’re well-rested, emotionally taken care of, in a good headspace to go to the restaurant the best we can. Upon arrival, we have an idea of what we’d like for dinner based on our passive fact-finding so far, maybe something vegetarian or with lots of greens or pasta-heavy like other people have enjoyed, but we’re open to the vibe. We’re open to how we’re feeling, what our server is recommending, what we’re seeing and smelling and sensing in the moment. Then we sit down and take a look at the menu. After talking to people, we know why some of those reviews were disgruntled – they thought because they were going to an Italian restaurant that they could order pizza but the menu is totally different than we expected, but that’s okay. We remember our preferences – greens, vegetarian, pasta – and also remember that the chef in the kitchen is really the one who’s the boss anyway so let’s take a big breath. What looks good? What feels good? How can we make this the best dining experience ever? Because look around – this place is actually amazing. A once-in-a-lifetime experience. So let’s ask those questions now. Let’s call over the server, let’s sit with the doula, and go through your questions and share your preferences. And likely, when we chat everything through, we can probably whip something up that’s pretty special and pretty amazing and pretty darn tasty.
TL;DR. Use the first 30, really 37 weeks, to gather information, not make decisions. Around week 30, we start to intentionally ask questions and form some preferences and talk with our support team. Once we have all of the information, we’re sitting in the restaurant, we have all the answers we need about OUR situation right NOW, that’s the time to place an order. Before that, passively gather and ask questions and be open and curious and nooo pressure.
Okay! Hopefully that is helpful! If you have any questions, please text or email me, and remember to please write down lots of questions as you see and read things over the next weeks or months.
All my love and chat soon! x