1/23/13 from AA

All pregnant women should have a birth plan, right? Well, this Mama is throwing hers out the window with baby #2. You see the first time around I created a very detailed 3-page document expressing my every desire surrounding the birth of my daughter. I shared it with my midwife and hospital and husband. I had baby girl's birth all planned out down to dim lights and soft music playing in the background. I was not going to have an epidural unless I was dying and needed to be put out of my misery. I didn't want monitors and IVs attached to me or baby. I wanted a peaceful, natural birth. And that's exactly what I did not get. I won't get into the whole story here but baby girl came 2 months early, I delivered at a hospital two hours from home with doctors I didn't know, I was attached to every machine available in the hospital - even baby girl still has a scar on her head from her own monitor! It was not at all what I had planned. So, this time around the birth plan is being shredded and instead I am adopting a four-word mantra: Get the baby out. This time I am hopeful that I will deliver a healthy, full-term take home baby, but I will not make ridiculous plans. I recognize now that dim lights and soothing music do not matter, nor does having a soft, pretty pillow from home (which, my doctor told me after 18 hours of labor, she finds to always bring bad luck and complications). I just want the baby out as quickly and safely as possible. There is only one exception: if baby boy is early I do not want an epidural. I want to be able to deliver him and then go right to the NICU to be with him. I will not sit around for hours in a hospital bed waiting for my legs to regain feeling while my child is all by himself in the NICU. No way. It's hard to be a planner and not be able to make plans; however, I tell every first time mom to think about your ideal birth, write down what you want, and then expect none of it to happen. And once baby arrives you'll realize that in the delivery room your plans don't matter anyway.