Looking back, my birth plan was delusional. I wouldn’t change a thing

Birth stories take many forms. Some are joyous, some are tragic, many are traumatic and confusing. Mine was an overwhelming mix of all of the above.

But between the blood and love and horror, there can also be a lot of humour. When I gave birth to my daughter, I wasn’t cracking jokes in the delivery suite. But in the years since, I’ve been able to look back on that strange time and recognise absurd mirth in the day – specifically, in the expectations I held for how it would go.

Women’s birth plans have become increasingly elaborate in recent years.Credit: Getty Images

During my pregnancy, I, like many parents, thought about birth constantly. I read books, listened to podcasts, took courses, journaled, meditated and spoke to countless friends in an exhausting attempt to not only understand what was about to happen, but to control it. The summation of these efforts came together in a mystical document familiar to many: the birth plan.

For those without children, or the mental capacity to spend months choreographing your perfect delivery, a birth plan is broadly a set of directions for how you’d like the event to go. Birth planning has, of course, existed for as long as birth itself. Individuals have always attempted to arrange an optimal environment for the safe delivery of their children. Centuries ago, perhaps that entailed engaging a midwife or asking your mother to come and stay with you. Today, birth workers encourage you to specify preferred forms of fetal monitoring or whether you want an epidural. At their core, birth plans are practical documents, but they’re also reflections of the time they were created.

My grandmother’s birth plan involved booking a hair appointment to get her perm set before her due date. My mother still jokes that her plan was mostly pre-ordering the cocktail of sedatives she’d require as if she were requesting a hotel breakfast.

Thanks to the time and location of my birth, I belong to a generation of parents who have a breadth of options and agency when it comes to managing our bodies. In addition to the more practical choices – birthing at home, in a hospital, in water, or on a yoga ball – there are also the shall we say, more fanciful elements.

Reading like a progressive medical textbook, my birth plan carefully indicated what interventions I’d like and how they should be applied, as well as a design brief that resembled that of a mid-budget year 12 formal.

It detailed my desired lighting set-up of the room, which included the installation of soft lamps and fairy lights. My partner was tasked with creating playlists to DJ between “depending on the vibe”. Channelling my inner Jennifer Lopez, I directed how I’d like to be approached and addressed by hospital staff, and when I should be misted with water. Days before I was due, I printed numerous copies, intending to hand them out at the door like an exhibition catalogue.

I am not alone in this kind of optimistic planning. One friend included the beverage options to be offered across the day. Another brought sheet masks to peel on and off, while another drafted a shot list of photos she wanted people to capture. Some curated their Netflix viewing, and several packed make-up bags, blow dryers and hair straighteners for touch-ups.

Recounting these stories now, we laugh until we cry (or wet ourselves, depending on the level of damage our pelvic floors endured). But we never laugh at each other. Rather, we’re laughing about the people we were pre-birth, and the ideas we held for our lives before children came crashing in. Lives where we had the energy to wonder if we’d prefer a Coke, a Pepsi or an episiotomy.

My birth plan, all six copies of it, never left my bag. My partner did set up the lights, but they were promptly ripped down when I started haemorrhaging and a team of doctors flooded the room. Unpacking my hospital bag weeks later, I found the copies of my birth plan buried under a wad of maternity pads. Reading them then, I felt both proud and ridiculous.

My delivery wasn’t the mystical experience I had carefully choreographed. It was overwhelming and at times scary. And while the much obsessed-over birth plan was never unpacked, it was still vital.

When you first discover you’re pregnant, it’s almost impossible to comprehend what is about to happen to you. How can anyone begin to process the cataclysm of physical, emotional and social changes they’re about to confront? My birth plan, as illogical as it ended up being, was a way to slowly face what was about to unfold. It helped me break down the endless, complex choices I had to make and dream about what this new life would be.

In the end, that new life didn’t entail being the kind of person who can apply a sheet mask between pulls of nitrous oxide. But it’s a life that is still as optimistic and delusional as my abandoned birth plan. Once I dreamed of meditating my way through labour. Now I dream of travelling with my daughter, being best friends, sharing in-jokes, never fighting and having a bedtime without a debate. Maybe one day I’ll laugh at those hopes alongside the Evian spray bottle I packed alongside my colostrum, but I bet I’ll still feel proud and ridiculous to have held them at all.

Wendy Syfret is a freelance writer and author based in Melbourne.