I Don’t Need A Plan, I Will Just Go With The Flow - Is It The Best Idea?

When I hear someone say that their plan for birth is to just go with the flow I have to take a moment and ask a few more questions.

There are two main ways of going with the flow. One can be a good choice, the other not so much.

Lots of people are a bit dubious about writing a birth plan. They likely know people who said their birth plan was useless, it was all irrelevant before even getting to hospital or they felt it was ignored. Birth is unpredictable so can you really make a plan?

Maybe not a ‘plan’ but you can certainly have preferences, ideas and maybe an plan of what you want. It might not be a step by step of what will happen but you can certainly have something noting your wishes.

It isn’t usually helpful to approach your birth with a rigid idea of what you want to happen. Things out of your control can change things and it can sometimes be hard to come to terms with those changes if you haven’t considered any other possibilities.

Being open to changes, knowing that you might need to change your place of birth or make choices you would prefer not is a good way to approach your birth. Going with the flow, as in not having a rigid fixed idea, can be a really positive approach.

This going with the flow comes from a place of informed decision making. You are open to making choices, open to accepting the change in approach but you are doing it from a place of knowledge. Ensuring you have learnt about birth so that you can make those choices with the right information is key. You might have learnt enough to make your choices or have learnt enough to know what questions to ask to help you make those decisions.

The going with the flow that concerns me is the one where there is no preparation and just an attitude of allowing whatever happens to happen, not questioning or choosing but doing anything offered/recommended.

If you come to your birth with no understanding or education around labour and interventions you can find yourself agreeing to care without being truly informed. At the time this might feel ok but many women look back on these experiences and wish they had done things differently. Hearing someone say ‘I wish I knew I could have said no’ or ‘I wish knew there was an alternative I could have chosen’ is hard. For some this is where trauma or negative birth experiences stem from. A feeling of being out of control or told what to do. Although being guided by the healthcare team looking after you might sound good before you are in your birth space, if they are not on the same page as you on the day, you can find yourself being pushed in a direction that you look back on with disappointment or regret.

This really is one of the main reasons I am so passionate about antenatal education. I honestly don’t care what choices you make for your birth. It is your birth, not mine, your choices to make. What I care about is that you have the information you need to make those choices with confidence and that you feel comfortable with any decisions you need to make. Maternity is a tricky journey – no one wants to put their baby at risk but there isn’t always a clear ‘best’ option so you need to gather information, process that and decide what is right for you and your baby. You might make a different decision to me, or to your doctor, but that is ok.

Whatever you plan, or hope, for your birth it is good to remain flexible and open to making changes. To be able to go with the flow when you need to. But I would really recommend still getting clued up on your choices and talking to your birth partner about your preferences, compromises and non-negotiables. Going with the flow with no real thought about any of this isn’t usually the best approach as you leave yourself completely in the hands of the midwife or doctor caring for you and they are unlikely to be anyone who have met before.   

My Confident Birth Workshop is free and online for anyone to join or if you are local to the Harrow area come and join us for in person classes and learn more about your birth tools and choices.

Beth x