birth plan – Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

Making a birth plan

31st Aug 202531st Aug 2025 Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

“Your birth plan will only end in disappointment.”

We hear it said so often birth is unpredictable, you can’t plan a birth, making a birth plan is just setting yourself up for disappointment and feeling guilty.

But in our experience of working with families, it is precisely because birth is unpredictable that having a birth plan is so important and can often be the thing that prevents feelings of guilt and disappointment.

Maybe people don’t like the idea of birth planning because they think making a birth plan means writing down your ideal birth and thinking positively and then all your wishes will come true.

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birth, choices, Information

Your feelings matter

30th Jun 2025 Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if everyone had all the support they needed through their pregnancy, birth and postnatal experiences? Then everyone would feel positive and proud and no one would get the message having a baby is something to fear. But the reality is things often don’t go to plan and many people don’t experience good support, they can be left feeling sad, angry, guilty all sorts of valid feelings.

Our groups are here for people who have had many different life and birth experiences and we want to make sure everyone feels welcome in our groups. We’re positive about birth and supporting people to have the information they need to prepare for birth. But we’re also here to support people who don’t feel positive about birth for any reason.

Birth is unpredictable, many things are out of our control. Sometimes, however much planning you’ve done, things happen during your labour and birth which are scary, upsetting or disappointing.

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birth, choices, Information, Labour

Confident Birthing Choices

30th Jun 202530th Jun 2025 Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

When we first wrote this blog post it was the start of the corona virus pandemic. That was a time when lots of things changed very fast and we often didn’t know from week to week what would be on offer in terms of healthcare for labour and birth. Since then we’ve been told that everything has returned to normal. But in our experience, we’ve not returned to the way things used to be, there’s still a lot more uncertainty and last minute changes than used to be usual. From what we can work out this is mainly due to staffing levels in maternity services. It’s generally not an issue for anyone planning to birth in the labour ward. However, those planning a home birth or to birth in the stand alone birthing centres are still being warned there is always the possibility they will be asked to come into the labour ward (or sometimes to the alongside birthing centre) on the day. For anyone having an induction of labour this can also affect how long they will need to wait between being advised to have their labour induced and when they are invited into the hospital to start that process as well as how long that process may take.

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