Let's talk about birth plans shall we?
Here's mine this time around.
Get to the hospital, have the baby as comfortable as possible, go home. The end.
Simple huh? Oh if only...
With my first, I didn't have a plan. I was just a naive 20 yr old but ultimately my first was the fastest and easiest labor. I remember I had been having some braxton hicks contractions around noon that day, and my stomach felt weird but I chalked it up to eating a bad cheeseburger at McDonald's. Around 9 pm that night I felt the first pangs of labor and we got to the hospital at about 10:45. I had a great epidural and had Serena around 1:00 in the morning after 25 minutes of pushing. However I found the pushing hard because I couldn't feel anything. The nurse would yell at me to push but I didn't know how or had the sensation.
The next time around I told myself that I wanted to try a med-free birth because I thought it might make the pushing easier. Basically I wanted to feel everything. Mind you this was 8 years later when I started thinking these crazy thoughts. With Layla last year I had a much longer labor. About 16 hours and roughly about 20 minutes of pushing. I held out on an epidural but still think I got it too early and it didn't work right on me so for the last 7 hours of labor, I felt everything and I do mean everything. You can read Layla's birth story here if you haven't already.
Soooo....now as I approach giving birth for the third time, I'm thinking I'm going to do things more on my terms. Granted I'm not induced like last time--I'm going to try and labor at home for awhile, and I'm going to get an epidural. I'm going to bring some music to listen to and maybe get up off the bed if I want to. Both times before I felt pressured and bullied by my labor nurses. I had some great nurses at certain times but when it came to giving birth, I ended up with a mean nurse. Maybe I was their last patient, not sure, but my doctors were awesome.
So tell me, if you are pregnant, or even if you're not yet, do you have a birth plan in mind? Let me know.
