A parent holding hands with a newborn.
A parent holding hands with a newborn. Credit: Aditya Romansa / Unsplash Credit: Aditya Romansa / Unsplash

In the prenatal classes my partner and I paid hundreds of dollars to attend at a local Toronto hospital, a nice English woman in her late fifties urged the room full of nervous future parents to “make a birth plan.” She explained this was a way to work through my plans and “goals” for my birth. My immediate reaction at the time was this: “I love plans!” With five years of hindsight, however, I firmly regret ever believing I could plan any part of bringing a tiny person into the world… 

After a catastrophically chaotic pregnancy where I lost a kidney (in a freak complication), endured three threatened miscarriage, and suffered through constant vomiting for months (thank you, Hyperemesis Gravidarum), the idea that my birth could be planned was exactly what I needed to hear. Except in my case, it was all lies!

As it explained to me in prenatal classes, birth plans were a way to identify and state my preferences. For the uninitiated, here is a sample birth plan, which addresses issues like who one’s birth partner will be, whether you plan to breastfeed, and how dim you want the lights to be while pushing.

When presented with my own generic form on which to build a birth plan, I was thrilled with the opportunity to put my preferences down on paper: Did I want an epidural or did I want to soak in the bath for pain relief (I decided I was Team Take The Epidural and Take a Nap)? Who did I want in the delivery room with me (I chose my husband because it was his progeny)? I could even decide on the soundtrack for when I pushed (Did you know there are birthing playlists on Spotify?). 

Now, for a self-identified control freak with lives with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, the promise of “planning” my birth was appealing. I have ALWAYS loved making plans, whether they are strategic plans for the running of a non-profit, personal financial plans, or simply dinner plans. Plus, birth plans were the “in” thing to do! They were trendier than an Uppababy stroller or an overpriced Nuna car seat! It wasn’t just my prenatal instructor who wanted me to know about them – The  Government of Canada even mentions birth plans on their website. Everyone from your local midwife to your mom’s best friend seems to recommend them. So, of course I conscientiously did this third trimester homework.

Now that I’m a seasoned parent of half a decade, I know the truth: on one hand, birth plans provide gestating people with the opportunity to think through their preferences for labour and delivery, which is a nice idea. It’s good to know in advance who you want there as your birth partner, and it’s great to consider what sort of pain relief you might want – if any. Research also shows that having requests from birth plans met increases the satisfaction with the birth experience. And yet, that same research study reveals birth plans only go according to plan 7.9 per cent of the time for low risks births. For high-risk births? Your plans often prove less valuable than the paper on which they’re written. 

Now, there’s nothing wrong with making a plan you might not be able to follow. We’ve all cancelled travel plans or plans to socialize with friends! But no one mentioned to me – neither my highly qualified prenatal instructor nor the Canadian government – that something as serious as one’s birth plans DOES NOT WORK OUT MOST OF THE TIME! Instead, birth plans are pitched as something you can probably use, barring an emergency c-section. But the truth is, there’s a laundry list of things that might not work out beyond an emergency caesarean…

My carefully constructed birth plan was as follows:

1.Schedule an induction for the day my doctor was working so he could deliver the bundle of joy himself instead of a stranger.  

Get epidural as soon as possible, before enduring much pain.

2. While waiting to push, I would watch a season of American reality TV series, The Bachelor, starring Jason Mesnick (The Bachelor is my guilty pleasure, and yet I’d never seen this classic season).

3. If time permitted, I would sleep for a few hours.

4. If my labour were particularly slow, I would catch up on my correspondence.

Instead, here’s what actually happened: The morning my husband and I were scheduled to reach the hospital for my induction, he sheepishly confessed that Jason Mesnick’s season of The Bachelor was not available for purchase anywhere he could find. My plan to binge watch The Bachelor was thwarted! At least I could still take an epidural and nap? Well, the wait for the anesthesiologist was longer than expected, so I laboured without pain relief for a LONG time. I eventually got my epidural, but it failed (Another thing they might have mentioned could happen to you in Prenatal Classes and didn’t), I was in too much pain to nod off (I did, however, manage to lose consciousness from the agony at one point. But I don’t think that counts). And while my obstetrician was on duty that day, my labour advanced too quickly and I ended up pushing my progeny into a resident’s arms before he had time to show up. 

Of course, I know that I am incredibly privileged to have brought a beautiful daughter into the world, regardless of how different the reality of labour was from my expectations surrounding it. But this begs the question: should all birth plans come with a warning that, statistically speaking, they probably won’t work out? Shouldn’t someone try to manage a gestating person’s expectations?

I firmly believe setting someone like me up for failed plans simply compounded what was already a fairly traumatic pregnancy. As someone who lives with anxiety, the sense of losing control of my body is very triggering for me. But that anxiety is easier to manage if my expectations of bodily autonomy are tempered from the start. Planning my birth gave me the illusion of control, and that compounded the fear I had when said control was ripped away by the realities of childbirth. 

Today, I fervently wish I hadn’t had a birth plan at all. Instead, I wish I had accepted that labour is more akin to improv than performing Shakespeare. When pushing a human from your body, you can’t learn the lines in advance, and sometimes, you just have to “say yes” to things you didn’t initially think you wanted for the survival of yourself and your baby.

Do I resent any pregnant person who takes comfort in a birth plan? Absolutely not! And if yours worked out, I’m so glad it did. I just wish someone had warned me that mine probably wouldn’t. Let’s stop lying to pregnant people and instead admit the truth: birth plans rarely go according to plan…