Birth Plan

What is a Birth Plan

Birth Plans are used to communicate more fully the details to your wishes during the birth of your child in relation to care for both mom and baby at birth. Although there's no way you can control every aspect of labor and delivery, a printed document gives you a place to make your wishes clear.

Trisomy 13 and the Birth Plan

In the case of a Trisomy 13 child, you may want to plan out certain aspects in a more detailed discussion based on “what if” scenarios so the birth plan may show some areas of flexibility based on how the actual labor and delivery occurs. These “what if” scenarios are given to mom during her prenatal exams and are based on the communication that occurs while planning a “plan of care” or plan of care conference”.

A plan of care conference is different from a birth plan as it focuses on one patient with specific diagnosis and the treatment plan. In the case of a Trisomy 13 child, the birth plan sometimes overlaps into a plan of care but should not be substituted for making a plan of care that looks into longer term care beyond the high risk pregnancy.

Resources to make a Birth Plan

There are many resources online to help in making a birth plan, some template the basic decisions and some are interactive, allowing you to come back and make amendments as you change in your preference or once you learn more along your journey. So a birth plan can be a document that is a work in progress over your pregnancy and in the case of the Trisomy 13 child, this is the best way to keep it up to date with the issues learned from each weekly visit.

Regardless of the version or template you use in your birth plan, it is necessary to have a written document (preferably in a form that can be updated easily). A written birth plan will also help refresh your practitioner's memory when you're in labor. And it will bring new members of your medical team up to speed about your preferences when you're in active labor (and probably not in the mood for drawn-out conversation).

Articles: Birth Planning –

What to include/consider

Kids Health for Parents

The Labor of Love

Birth Planning FAQ’s (text version of samples)

American Pregnancy

Baby World

About: Pregnancy, Parenting and Family

Sites that offer Birth Planning Online.

Most of the more common interactive birth planning sites created for healthy babies will guide you through the process of creating a birth plan. Some make it as simple as checking any options that you know you want or that you'd like to ask your caregiver about. Some will allow you to print out a draft of your plan (one time only) and others will allow you to save your plan for updates later. Remember that not all of the options listed on these online forums will be available in every setting or make sense for your situation, particularly if your pregnancy is high-risk.

Examples of Real Life Birth Plans

For Trisomy 13 children of High Risk Pregnancies

Consultative Birth Planning is available for parents who have a negative or rare prenatal diagnosis (or high-risk) and who have questions or want a helping hand in documenting their child's issues along side their options and wishes.

(Links to be added within next 7 days)

It is important to take your draft with you to a prenatal appointment and go over it with your doctor or midwife. This will give you both a chance to figure out what's possible and what's not, and to find some common ground. And if you can't reach a consensus, you'll still have time to explore other options. Print out your final plan and give one to your practitioner, have one put in your file at the hospital or birth center, and put one in the bag you're packing for the day you give birth.