Why should I write up a Birth Plan, you may ask. Why should you? Why shouldn’t you write up a Birth Plan. Even if you don’t use it, writing up your Birth Plan helps you to plan your birth, helps to set it out in your mind. You can write several Birth Plans that will cover all bases, from first time mothers, to caesarean, to VBAC, to multi-birth. It takes away the unknown, helps you to see exactly when and where you may need the most support during your labour and birthing process and helps keep you focused on that blissful goal at the end, holding your precious gift to the world. Writing a Birth Plan gives you the sense of power, sense of control that may seemingly be taken away from you during your labour and birthing experience by the medical profession who may be attending to you.

Another thing to help you prepare for labour is to be completely and 100% focused on what type of birthing experience you want. With this I mean… if you have any seed of doubt about what you think your body cannot do then you are allowing that seed to grow and get bigger to the point where it takes over your thinking. Its very easy for people, friends, family, acquaintances and the medical profession to say “oh you can try and have a VBAC; a homebirth; or whichever birth you want” but thats not being very positive, that’s not being very supportive. Thats letting the seed of doubt in. To say “try” is saying that you may attempt, but we know you cant really do it, we know you are going to fail. See what the difference is when you say to yourself… “I will try a vaginal birth; I will try a homebirth” compared to “I will have a vaginal birth; I will have a homebirth”. Do you see the difference?

Most people would probably not think of child birth as something that requires an understanding of how to set and achieve goals in your life. But achieving success in any area of life requires an understanding of what it means to set, focus on and pursue a goal, in the face of whatever circumstances or opposition may come your way. This is why writing up your Birth Plan is so important to you. It’s that sense of empowerment, that inner confidence of being able to have the desired birthing experience you want, it’s allowing yourself to listen to that inner Birthing Goddess that may have been bullied, oppressed or worn down by previous negative experiences. Your Birth Plan will help you to own your birthing experience. Child birth will be an experience that you will remember even when you are an elderly woman. Let this experience be one that you can recall with a sense of pride and empowerment. I absolutely support any woman who feels she has to miss an appointment to avoid being harassed, if she feels she has to, but what I really feel strongly is that she should go armed with the right knowledge and face them anyway. Go armed with your goal, your Birth Plan, for that goal of what you intend for yourself and your child is the real key to success. Goals are powerful ideas and ideas override the so called facts.