Don't just prepare for a dream birth

Preparation is key, a phrase most people are familiar with. There is plenty of knowledge out there surrounding preparation and how important it is in most tasks.

Take a vacation for example. You book your flights, book a place to stay, get some new swim suits, organized a car rental and how much spending money you will need. You visualize yourself sitting on the beach relaxing, going out having a good time in the evening. You’ve a couple of sight-seeing tours or activities booked. What could go wrong? You’ve prepared for a fantastic vacation. So what happens when you are two days into your dream vacation and you become really ill or slip and break your ankle? This was not part of the plan. Do you suffer until you can finally go home and spend the following weeks or months thinking of how absolutely horrible your vacation was and how you never want to go on another vacation again because it was just not what you expected or wanted? Of course not because you prepared for if things did not go to plan. In your planning you factored in the unforeseeable and bought travel insurance. This meant you were covered for any treatment you needed and had such peace of mind that you were able to stay on and still make the most of the trip.

So let’s talk about preparing for birth. Like a vacation you have picked a hospital, a midwife or obstetrician, you’ve painted the nursery, packed a bag for the big day and picked out baby’s first outfit. You visualize yourself giving birth in a particular way, be that with an epidural/non medicated/at home/in water etc. You’ve a photographer picked out to come and take those first photos of your family, you’ve done a regular prenatal class. So again what could go wrong? You’ve everything prepared for the perfect birth for you. So what happens on the day if things don’t go the way you had planned? You planned a non-medicated birth but after 30 hours of labor you don’t feel like you can go any longer without an epidural but you’re terrified of getting it? Or staff have a concern for the baby and you need to transfer from homebirth to hospital and everything you pictured is about to be turned on its head.

The mistake I made first time round was I completely stuck my head in the sand on that nice relaxing beach and would not entertain the slightest possibility that my birth would be anything other than what I wanted. Why? Because I was scared beyond belief of those other possibilities – episiotomy, epidural or dare I even say it cesarean. Why would I prepare for something that was not under any circumstance going to happen to me? Travel insurance made perfect sense to me when I travelled just in case but preparing for what I didn’t want in childbirth no, no, no. So, my homebirth turned into a 32 hour induction, cesarean and close to 12 months of post-traumatic stress.

You need to prepare for what you don’t want even more than what you do want. If you are scared of something the last thing you want to do is have to face it in labor. Taking care of your mental health is the best gift you can give yourself, your partner and your baby. Mindfulness is the ultimate tool you can introduce into your life, and even more so into your birth preparation. GentleBirth uses this amazing technique to build Moms emotional resilience so no matter what happens on the day your baby arrives, you can still remain calm, confident and in control.

A positive birth is a fear free birth. You can only be truly fear free if you are prepared to face those fears. GentleBirth is no different to travel insurance in that if you want to be fully prepared for every eventuality then it’s a no brainer to invest in yourself.

GentleBirth – empowering couples to control the controllables for a decade.

www.gentlebirth.com