Or is this birth plan okay?

[1997r2017]

Basically, i dont want an extra long birth plan as i feel it will be ignored, also i know that forceps/venthouse could be needed but i feel like they are more likely to avoid then if i just say no.
Is there anything ive forgotten?
Please excuse my writing xxxx

Until birth there is no baby. There is a potential baby.

It isn't Schrodinger's cat. At the time of birth, there IS a baby. It may be unborn, but it exists and needs to exit the mother's body. Unless already dead, the priority of delivery is indeed to maximise safety for both mother and child. The comfort/wishes of the mother are secondary both to her safety and her child's safety. First time planned home births would be a clear example of putting the mother's wishes above the risks to the child.

And so would refusing a vitamin K injection for the newborn.

Thanks @HiJenny35 for explaining about the cord clamping after the injection.

I did have natural third stage in my birth plan (though pretty much everything I had written was caveated with 'if possible') but after 6.5 hours of pushing I recall the midwife advising me I'd be better off having the injection as my uterus could well have been too tired to efficiently expel the placenta otherwise. I was pretty out of it on gas & air but I'm pretty sure that's what she said anyway.

I was absolutely fine with that, but I was still a little surprised at the swiftness of it all. Maybe I was lucky but I had injection, the doctor fiddled about for a minute or two, pressed on my stomach and it was done.

My OH hadn't been sure he wanted to cut the cord but in the end, for the reasons you gave, he didn't get a choice.

It's nice to fully understand the hows and whys now - but at the time it just wasn't important. As long as the baby and I were safe.

HiJenny you definitely can have delayed cord clamping and then have the injection. There is no rule saying they must give the injection as soon as the baby is out! I had it done that way. There was no delay in placenta delivery, I just stated my preferences for both DCC and managed 3rd stage. When I'm at work doing ELCS I'm the one giving the injection, and if DCC is safe, we can still do it.

My antenatal notes had a few sections for preferences. Most of mine was "Whatever is necessary to keep us safe," but there were a few things I was quite clear on - no pethidine, as if delivery is far enough away for it to be given safely, I'd rather have an epidural, and C-section instead of high/rotational forceps. I've seen some pretty horrible forceps deliveries, but I've also seen difficult C-sections where the head is really deeply impacted in the pelvis, and the're pretty scary too. It's not the case that you can only have one or the other safely at any point, there's some time when both are possible, though knowing which is safer overall is a tough call to make.

Of course she is. But nobody else has to go against their own training to accomodate her wishes.

I don't think my birth plan was looked at once! Birth is something nobody can plan for that's for sure, both of my births were much easier than I imagined they would be, just go with it, keep calm and breathe.

@Peng - yes of course. But if in so doing, there are negative consequences then she needs to take full responsibility for them and not blame others for her decisions.

Hijenny you can absolutely have DCC and Active 3rd stage. Where I work we practice DCC exclusively and most of our women opt for active 3rd stage also.

We even practice DCC in theatre and women are most definitely having active management then!

I made one for dc1.

Not even pregnant yet with dc2 but my second birth plan will say - always ask for my consent. That's it

I find it worrying that hairy thinks medical staff would force women to accept medical treatments if they deem it in the baby's best interests. I can assure you that is absolutely not the case. Until the baby has taken its first breath it legally has no right to life whereas women ALWAYS have a legal right to decline treatment. It would be legally be abuse to carry out treatment to save the baby!

Without consent that should say. It's abuse to carry out medical treatments without consent even if that treatment is needed to save the baby. No consent, no treatment. That dosnt go against our training at all, it's the law.

I'm assuming that what happened to you was that you attempted a natural third stage, waited for delayed cord clamping and after 15 minutes as the placenta didn't come away by itself
No, that's not what happened. Nothing happened at all for 20 mins after birth, I just stayed in the pool. The intention was always to have a managed 3rd stage. I didn't move out of the water until the cord had been cut, I had the injection once I got out and passed the placenta pretty soon afterwards.

That birth plan is fine. It's the ones you get that are 6 pages long, and tell you that they spent "months" on it that you think, oh dear. (Of course, that one all went tits up, and the dad was weirdly very aggressive about it. I've looked after a few dads like that, and I'm thinking hang on a minute, whose labour is this?!)

I do feel a bit sad when I see women write no forceps etc unless necessary. I can understand why but it's not like we get them out for a laugh. Personally, I hate episiotomies. They bleed very badly - I'm amazed they used to be routine. I'd be interested to see what the PPH rate was. I've only done 1 and I was nearly sick afterwards, and I've got a very strong stomach. That said, I would consent to one myself if needed but I hate, hate, hate doing them.

I'm not sure ventouse are much better really than forceps. Better for avoiding 3rd degree tears but I've seen some that looked pretty brutal and one that ended up with a baby with a very nasty head injury. C sections I've seen them have to use forceps to get the baby's head out, even had to break a baby's arm once it was so wedged in. Just through witnessing them, I would want to avoid a C Section as much as possible because of seeing what they do to the stomach muscles.

But before I scare you off OP your birth plan is completely sensible and reasonable. Let's face it, every option for getting the baby out is shit but it doesn't have to be a traumatic horror story either. As a midwife yes I've got lots of horror stories but also lots of lovely ones and plenty of first time mums give birth just fine. As long as you stay open minded and accept unfortunately childbirth is one of the few things in life now we can't always control then you'll get on okay.

@GoldenWorld - great post.

I was told (albeit 20 years ago!) that if you write it down it saves you having to think when you are in the throes of contractions. You can always change your mind. Mine had to go out the window when I needed emergency c-section first time but was helpful for second child when they wantedd to try forceps delivery and I had in big capital letters NO FORCEPS - gave H extra arguing power

Yours looks absolutely fine. Quick and easy for MW to read and clear and concise.

Oh man this made me well up. I wrote a plan much like this, very proud of myself for its brevity and lack of woo. Straightforward, I thought. Basic. Not much to ask.

Not only did absolutely nothing happen as I'd hoped, up to and including I didn't even go into labour properly and spend two agonising days being induced to no avail, took everything pain relieving they would give me by the end, and still ended up having a c-section; the little passage I'd written re "if I have a C-section", purely as an insurance measure because no WAY was I having a c-section (much less begging for one by the end), was completely ignored by the time we got to that point, and my partner and I were both too knackered and traumatised to even notice a much a less protest. No delayed cord clamping, partner didn't get to cut the cord, no skin to skin. It was there,in my notes, stuck in at the relevant page. I don't think anyone ever read it.

Tldr: I really hope your birth goes better than mine and you don't end up relying on your birth plan to speak for you because as far as I can tell they're just a cruel joke the medical profession plays on expectant mothers.

Risks of vbac are 1:200 for uterine rupture, not 2%.

Miaow, please tell me you sued that hospital - that's appalling. I'm so sorry .