Birth plans

[magnumicelolly]

Tell me about yours? What was/is on it? All thoughts appreciated!

All I had to write on mine was a preference for the mlu.
This is taken at my hospital to mean:
Option of water birth
Try to get avoid epidural
Active birthing positions
Try to avoid continual monitoring
Delivered to chest
Bf immediately
Physiological third stage if possible

If I had required interventions (I didn't) then having begun as a mlu patient would have still told the hcps about my general hopes and fears for the birth.

I'd been measuring big in late pregnancy and hadn't taken the GD test or agreed to a scan so DS was at least technically a higher risk and as such I prepared for it. The way I laboured and the way I delivered were all planned to improve the outcome. I wanted to risk no disturbance of this.

My birth plans, all 4 completely ignored, this time i don't intend to write one!

All my births par from one were straightforward and in 2 of them i noted explicitly i wanted an epidural. Excuses were made at both births including, "it's too soon" & then "it's too late"

And i explicitly wrote that i'm completely against ventouse and would rather that if baby was to be in distress, baby's life is more important and i would rather c-section was used. This was ignored completely, dd3 was in immense distress for almost an hour, heartbeat dipping, menconium stained waters, yet they allowed to me to go on so long they had to get dh to consent to a ventous as i wouldn't sign it as i was angry and completely high on gas & air!

Surfice to say i kicked the doctor in the head as i did not take well to my legs being put into stirrups and was very angry they allowed it to go on so long. My dd3 now has autism & learning difficulties and to this day i believe all that time in distress mixed with the ventous shaping her head into a cone shape contributed mostly to her struggles she has today!

Pumpkin - there is a lot we don't understand about what happens during birth might impact on long term development, beyond the blindingly obvious.

The one intervention which has been linked with autism, in a tentative way, is augmentation and induction with syntocinon. I sometimes think about this as I had syntocinon with my third child, who has autism.

Not sure we'll ever really understand it all though.

I believe strongly that distress to the mother and baby during birth, with the additional impact of reduced oxytocin for both can cause autism or at least trigger it in those predisposed genetically.

This has been a really interesting thread, thanks everyone!