The Birth Plan

Planning a birth is like planning a wedding. Except that you don't know what day the wedding is going to be on; and you don't really know if you can have the venue you want... or anything else for that matter! You just have to rock up on the day and find out.

Maybe the sun will be shining, all your guests available and it might all take place when the you've had enough time to lose that last 3kg before your last dress fitting.... and then the music starts and everything's romantic and lovely and it doesn't drag on too long and the guests are happy...

Or it might all happen really fast, when you're miles from your goal weight; and when the people you wanted present aren't available; and the venue changes suddenly and nothing is as you imagined it. Disaster could even strike at any time and you'd have no way of knowing if and when such a thing might happen!

So... Would you still PLAN it?  ... Would you still circle a day on your calendar, patiently considering the probabilities (from a positive viewpoint, of course) and happily chat away to every family member and total stranger who wants input, as though you really had any idea when/where/how it was all going to happen?

Maybe this is a crap analogy full of truly shallow comparisons, but I guess this comes some way to describing how I now feel about planning this birth. I already "planned" a birth once, almost exactly 2 years ago, and that was fun/interesting. I certainly learned a lot!!

But with 3 weeks (?) to go until our new baby is born, I have had to come to some sort of resting place with my ideas about the birth - not least of all because it involves other people who are going to help me try and achieve what might very well be the impossible dream: The intervention-free, physiologically natural, vaginal birth of my daughter.

Things are different this time. In terms of our plans, we are not "planning" a water birth at home with independent midwives. We are "planning" for the baby to arrive, probably in a hospital setting; hoping desperately that things progress in a manner that would ultimately be compatible with a home birth; but with the setting now seeming somehow irrelevant, we've decided that if things are going well, then the hospital staff (at our particular hospital) seem to be happy to let nature take its course... and if things don't progress in the way we would like, then we're probably going to be in the right place.

What about all the lovely things that might make this birth absolutely perfect? (Relaxed location, truly private surroundings, comfortable birth pool, beautiful music...) I am still thinking about these things. Was the birth of our son less than perfect? Well, yeah! It's been a hard thing for us to fully process. But the things that made it okay in the end were not on that list. The things that made it okay were the fact that he's healthy; that we got breast feeding established; and that we had amazing support from very knowledgable and generous people that allowed us to see past many elements of what went wrong and focus on what could still be achieved despite that most of it wasn't going to plan. Really, this was incredibly positive, given the terrifying nature of the emergency surgery and the complete loss of my own sense of agency and control over my body.

Some people will undoubtedly read this and think it's sad... or that I sound jaded and not at all positive. But writing that last line about having "control over my body" makes me realise that I wasn't completely ready to surrender to the birth of my son, no matter how it was going to take place. I've told many people since that it was still so utterly surreal - even after 5 days of labour - when they handed him to me for the first time. I simply couldn't believe that there was really a real baby in there that whole time!

Discovering his 'realness' has been the source of much joy in our lives over the past 2 years. I am quite genuine when I say that this pregnancy - this baby - is so much more real to me (before birth) than my son ever was. I am looking forward to this birth in a way that I doubt is even possible to experience first time around. Then again, there'll be other mums who've birthed vaginally who will be laughing behind their hands at my eagerness! My sage and extremely pro-VBAC independent midwife was the first one to tell me that I shouldn't look forward to a discomfort-free experience.... but that it was more likely that instead of my recovery being 6 weeks, it might be more like 3 after a vaginal birth.

... Should I "plan" for that?

That reminds me, I'd better get some more icy poles for the freezer!