I Didn’t Know What I Wanted My Birth To Look Like
I listened to a podcast the other day about birth doulas and the initial meeting when planning a birth. The doula being interviewed said that the mother had a completely different plan than what actually happened in the moment, and the magic word for any “birth plan” is to be flexible. The truth is, I had no clue what I wanted my first birth to look like; that word ‘flexible’ is the word I wish I had been told early on.
I didn’t start really thinking about my birth plan until I was around six months pregnant. At the time, I was in California, and my doctor-care team at Kaiser gave me a slip of paper so that I could write down my wishes. It felt a little strange to sit in a sterile white environment, with a white coat sitting across from me, thinking about the ways I wanted to be supported in birth. Honestly, up until this point I hadn’t thought too much about it, yet it felt like there was so much I was supposed to want. I had seen sitcom births, all in a hospital (the recommended way); I had dipped my toes in the natural birth side and considered having my first child in water.
I thought about this for a while. Going back and forth on what I wanted, before haphazardly writing down how I wanted to feel on the doctor sheet with no other directions on how I wanted it to go. Then, I was asked if I wanted a doula. Being thousands of miles across the country from my family and friends, I considered it. I couldn’t predict how much support I’d really need. And then there was a huge part of me that wanted privacy and fewer people in my delivery room.
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I remember when I started my pregnancy journey in 2025, all I could see was water. Abundance, joy, flow, feminine, life-giving, relaxing, slow. The shift into being more than six months pregnant brought a completely different feeling. I was ready and nervous, feeling shaped by whatever my baby in my body was telling me. And, I guess that’s why when I was suggested different things for my birth plan, I froze. I went back and forth around what I wanted. Something in me wanted a hospital birth, and a part of me felt guilty for choosing that. I had seen people I admired give birth in water, without medication, and it was the right choice for them.
Each conclusion I came back to kept opening the door to all the things I couldn’t prepare for. So, before giving my doctor any “plan” on that small sheet of paper, I found that grounding back to myself was what I needed most. It helped me differentiate between what was true for me and what I was being told I needed. So what I ended up writing down was simply: support, love, and flow. In my journey, that looked like a hospital birth with a supportive care team.
The truth is, everyone’s birth plan is their own, and I think it’s important that when creating it, it comes from an authentic place. I am very much integrated into the herbalism and natural medicine world, yet the hospital I was at made me feel so supported; my body felt celebrated, and I felt that when it came time to birth my daughter, my nervousness would soften, even if things didn’t go according to plan. I also felt that being in a space where medical interventions were available could help ease my anxieties around my first time.
Nothing on that ‘birth plan’ sheet helped me anticipate what would happen instead. But I can tell you that my body took over, and it knew exactly what to do.
I truly believe that trusting my body meant allowing myself to let go of what I thought birth needed to look like. It’s impossible to plan every detail, but the missing piece I found most valuable was building trust within my body to let it take the lead and move through the experience in our own way.
I still think it’s humorous that I was handed a piece of paper to “plan” something so deeply unpredictable. In trying to form my wishes into words, what really mattered was everything that couldn’t be distilled on that page. At the time, I didn’t know what birth would ask of me, but I was learning to trust that I could meet it when the time came. Perhaps that’s where we have more power than we realize, not in anticipating what will happen, but in how we meet ourselves within the ceremony of uncertainty.
