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What’s your birth plan? It’s a question I was asked by lots of people and I didn’t really have an answer, at first. I did a little research and decided my birth plan was quite simple: epidural. Then I found an extensive checklist of things to consider. It seemed a bit overwhelming, so I used it as a starting point to talk about labor and delivery with my husband and doctor.

Now, a year after my son’s birth, I can look back and see that there were five surprising factors that affected my birthing experience. I hope my insights can save you a lot of discomfort.

1) If you do want an epidural, ask for it well in advance.
Why? Because the anesthesiologist is busy covering other patients. A woman giving birth does not get priority over someone who was in a car accident and in need of anesthesia for emergency surgery. You may be last on the list for an epidural. I received mine an hour after I asked for it. I’ve heard of women having to wait 30 minutes to 2 hours. If you think you’ll want one at 4cm dilation, ask for it at 3cm.

2) Have a designated advocate, whether it’s your partner, your mother, a doula or a friend.
Recognize that you will be exhausted and in the midst of contractions. You won’t have the stamina to ask a nurse for water for the fifth time, or to beg for the anesthesiologist to arrive or to persuade the doctor or midwife to return to take a look and tell you how dilated you are. You are going to have to turn to your advocate, make your point once and rely on that person to do the heavy lifting to make your demand.

3) Stay informed.
My hubby and I didn’t have time for childbirth classes (and we weren’t really interested in spending the last of our handful of pre-baby weekends sitting in class). But we did watch a great DVD together called “Laugh and Learn about Childbirth” taught by Sheri Bayles, RN.  My husband was not what I would call “eager” to watch the video, but I told him that it was important to me because I needed him to understand what was happening so I could rely on him to help make decisions. We watched it in half hour segments over a few weeks and the best part was that it taught us what questions to ask the doctor so we could keep track of progress during the labor and delivery.

4) Bring Depends undergarments.
I know this sounds yucky, but it’s a lot yuckier and uncomfortable if you don’t have Depends. My friend recommended I get these in advance, but I didn’t because I couldn’t admit that I would need them. The day after I gave birth I sent my husband on an errand to the drugstore to buy them. Do yourself a favor and arrive with them. You’ll need them whether you have a vaginal birth or a C-section.

5) Decide whether you will cord blood bank.
Make this decision well in advance of the due date because once you go into labor, it’s too late to decide that you want to preserve your baby’s stem cells from the cord blood. If you do decide to preserve it (as we did with ViaCord, the sponsor of this blog), then determine whether you or your partner will be responsible for calling the cord blood storage service from the hospital. Whoever takes that responsibility should plug the service’s phone number into their cell phone immediately. For those who decide to donate your baby’s cord blood, confirm in advance with your hospital that donation is an option.

Preparing for labor and childbirth is a challenging task and each woman’s actual experience is unique. These are five factors that affected my birthing experience.

If you’ve given birth, I’d like to know what helped or didn’t help you through the labor and delivery. What surprises did you encounter? What do you wish you knew? Are you expecting and preparing your birth plan now? Do you enjoy the planning process or is it overwhelming?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Baby Prep, Roles & Responsibilities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.