With most midwives, you will have a birth preferences visit at about 36 weeks. Your midwife may choose to do it earlier, especially if you are at risk of preterm birth.
A birth preferences list is not quite a birth plan – it’s a discussion of what you would like things to look like, what’s important to you, and what things might look like if things don’t go the way you would prefer.
What options will be discussed?
- Where you would like to give birth
- Who you would like present at your birth – and anyone you would not like present
- What options are available for pain relief
- Monitoring your baby’s heart beat in labour
- Who you would like to catch your baby
- What options you would like for cord care and who you would like to cut your baby’s cord (if you are doing so)
- Whether you would like skin to skin in the immediate postnatal period and who with
- What options are available for the birth of your placenta
- Whether you would like to keep or dispose of your placenta
- How you would like to feed your baby
- How you would like to supplement your baby’s feeding if it is medically needed
- What options there are around vitamin K for your newborn
- Whether you would like a postnatal stay somewhere or whether you will go straight home
What other information will be offered?
- Induction and augmentation – how, what and why
- Vaginal examinations in labour – what they are, and why they would be offered
- Antibiotics in labour – why they would be offered and how
- Degrees of tearing and episiotomy
- Blood loss, iron infusions, and blood products
- Assisted vaginal birth
- Caesarean birth