HOME BIRTH ESSENTIALS: BIRTH PLAN

ANSWER “At home with home birth practice, your birth plan might look something a little more flowery. It might say that you want special essential oils or flowers or only your husband to touch your hands, or you want a water birth or you don’t want Pitocin vitamin K or eye ointment, whatever you feel strongly about. That’s what you write down and that becomes your birth plan. Your birth plan is shared, should be shared, could be shared with everyone involved in your care.

In hospital birth I sometimes see mom’s print out a piece and put it right on their door so that everyone who walks into their delivering room knows exactly what they want.

At home and home birth, I’ve seen it just pans it out. Everyone gets a piece of paper. And my personal practice, we give you a birth plan to fill out. It’s very short. And we have you posted on your refrigerator so that when we come in labor to check on you, we have all of your wishes and we make sure that everyone who’s at the birth sees it.”