My Birth Plan: All I Care About is Everyone Alive

*Sometimes, birth doesn’t go the way you plan. Birth and motherhood is hard and complicated. Anyone who carries, loves, adopts, or raises a baby, living or not is a mother. Even if your baby isn’t with you on earth, you are still a mother. 

As a first time mom, I scoured Pinterest and blog posts about the best birth plans. Water birth, natural birth, planned induction, delayed cord clamping, golden hour, no epidural, epidural, Pitocin, no Pitocin, vitamin k shot, eye ointment, water breaking naturally, and the list could go on and on. The more I researched, the less prepared I felt and the more I doubted myself. That birth ended in an emergency C-section that led to a difficult emotional postpartum recovery. I felt like I failed my baby before she even took her first breath. I felt like I failed myself because I couldn’t live up to the standards I had set in my head. 

When I found out I was pregnant with my second, I knew what to expect. I wrote down my birth plan: everyone alive. 

My mindset with my second birth was much different. I knew that as long as my baby and I made it out alive and safe, I did all that I needed to. A birth plan held no power over me. Now that doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a “birth wish list.” These are things that would be nice but didn’t need to happen to achieve my birth plan, things that I would love but didn’t need to feel like I did my job as a mother.

As I got closer to my due date with my second, there was a peace that i didn’t have with my first. Maybe it was the fact that I was a second time mom but I know new deep down that my expectations of myself as a mom eased my mind. Having a successful vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) versus another cesarean would give me the same result, my baby. No matter the interventions I did or didn’t have, I was still a mother. And a good one at that. 

Looking back I wish I could tell myself and every other mom who thinks they didn’t do enough “You did it! Your body didn’t fail you. You and your baby are alive!” And that is a successful birth plan.