(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
Welcome to the birth prep podcast. I'm Taylor, your birth bestie, who's here to support you as you plan and prepare for the unmedicated birth of your dreams. If you're ready to ditch the fear, conquer the hospital hustle, support that bump and bod, and walk into the delivery room like the HGIC you were born to be, then buckle up, babe.
This is where it all goes down. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the birth prep podcast. It's time for another episode of the HGIC hotline.
If you're new here, that's where I answer your questions right here on the podcast. If you have a question that you'd love to see answered here, you can head to the show notes to submit yours. As usual, we have three questions today and they're all very different on the surface, but they all boil down to one core idea, which most of them do is that you are the one in charge.
So if there's anything you're walking away with today, it's that, which by the way, is the name of this segment, head girly in charge. That's you, babe. If you haven't been in your HGIC energy, you're feeling unsure, you're second guessing yourself, or maybe there's that little voice in your head saying, but what should I do? This one is for you.
First question is from Sarah. My provider is pushing an induction. They're saying my fluid is high, but that baby is good.
What should I do? Okay, Sarah, I want to start right here because there's one word in your question that tells me everything I need to know and it's should. You didn't ask, what do I want to do? You asked, what should I do? And that one little word tells me that you are outsourcing your power. You're looking outside yourself for the answer.
When the truth is nobody gets to decide this, but you, nobody can honestly, I can't tell you what you should do. I have no clue. I mean, I can tell you what I would do in that situation, but that's not helpful because you're not me.
So I'm going to give you back your power. Here you go. Reach out and take it.
And we're going to learn how to make an informed decision about this situation. So let's break it down. High amniotic fluid levels or polyhydramnios can mean a few things, but in many cases, it's just a variation of normal.
If baby is healthy, your vitals are stable and there's no additional concern. This may be more about provider preference than true risk. But how do we actually know that you need to get specific? Ask what is my AFI, which is your amniotic fluid index.
Ask what threshold are you using to say it's high? Ask, are there any other symptoms or concerns showing up at this time? And then ask these golden questions. What are the risks of doing nothing? What are the risks of induction? Are we talking urgency or convenience? Because here's the thing, a suggestion is not a sentence. You do not have to follow through with whatever they suggest.
You get to decide. And when I hear these questions like this, you either need more information or you've already decided, and you are looking for somebody to give you permission to make that decision. Honey, you don't need my permission.
And if you need more information, it is your job to go and get it. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you're wrong for asking the question.
It's just all within your power. And the main goal of me being here on the internet talking to you guys about this stuff is to put the power back in your hands where it belongs. You get to say, I need more information before deciding.
You get to say, I need a week to think about it. You get to go weigh the pros and cons. You get to go pray about it.
And if you decide to say no, that's a full sentence. Your job is not to please your provider. It's to advocate for you and your baby and your birth.
If baby's good, you have plenty of time to make a clear, informed, and empowered decision, not a pressured one. This is your birth, your body, your call, period. And if you do not have enough information, go and find it.
Maybe additional testing is in order. Whatever the case may be, if anybody's stuck on a decision, you either don't have enough information or you have already decided and something is holding you back from making that decision for yourself. Just chew on that for a second.
Anywho, moving on to question number two. This is from Genevieve. I love that name.
Do I really need to write a birth plan if I already know what I want? Good question, girl. I love that you sound so confident. I'm going to start you off with a short answer, and then we're going to get into the long one.
No, you do not need a physical birth plan, but you do need a strategy to back up the decisions that you've made for yourself. If your mindset is locked in, you've done your prep, and you know how to communicate clearly and hold your boundaries under pressure, then maybe your birth plan can simply be no one touches me or performs any procedure or makes any decisions on my behalf without my clear, informed, and verbal consent. That's really all you need, right? That's a full birth plan.
You can even get simpler than that. No one or nothing touches me without my verbal consent. It's foundational.
That covers everything, right? But here is why I still recommend having something written down, especially for hospital births. Your birth plan is so much more than a sheet of paper with what you want on it. It's much more than a pretty Pinterest template.
It's not a wishlist. It's a boundary document. It lets your team know what your non-negotiables are at a glance.
This is especially important for those hospital births because you are going to be meeting a lot of your team that day for the first time. This is a great and easy way for you to basically draw a line in the sand. Like, this is what I'm accepting.
This is what I am not accepting. Here's the information for your convenience. Also, I think sitting down and doing this work really forces you to clarify what really matters most.
You can give your partner like a little cheat sheet to help advocate for you when you are deep in labor land. And it kind of gives a signal, like lets your staff know that you're not here to play good patient. You're here to birth on your terms.
Clear communication is essential for this experience and for the partnership that is going to be going on that day between yourself and your teammates. And a birth plan is just one way to get that communication across. It should not be the only way.
Do not let a piece of paper replace those conversations. Those are extremely important, but it is a wonderful addition to those conversations and can really save you from having to have those conversations over and over again that day. Because honey, you're going to be busy.
I hear all the time, oh my gosh, they didn't even read mine. I worked so hard on it. It was so pretty.
It was three pages long, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, let me give you my tips. Keep it to one page, one one-sided piece of paper.
Use bullet points, bold fonts, very, very clear language. Focus on outcomes, not just preferences. And like, I see a lot of language where it's like, well, I'd really like this, but if that's not available, then I'll do this.
Then I'll do whatever. I also see a lot of moms just put a lot of no this, no that, none of this, don't do that. And that's totally fine.
But what do you want? Focus on that instead. Like, okay, you don't want to do continual monitoring, but you've decided that intermittent monitoring is a better way to go about it. Instead of doing no continual monitoring, just put, I would like intermittent monitoring.
Be as clear and simple as you can, because just putting no continual monitoring could mean you might not want any monitoring at all. I don't know. Your provider is not going to know.
Your nurses aren't going to know. So get specific. Specific is terrific.
Write that down. So to answer your question, you don't need a birth plan on a piece of paper, but if you're stepping into a hospital setting, having one can just serve as an little cushion of communication. And it's not because you aren't clear on what you want.
You shouldn't need a piece of paper to know your birth plan. Just FYI for everybody. But it's because the system operates as it does.
And we want to go in as protected as humanly possible. When you have stuff in writing, it's just, it's like, okay, document this, put this in my chart, make sure everybody has a copy, make sure everybody knows that this is the plan. Less room for, oh, we didn't know.
Anyways, I'll shut up about this, but that's basically my two cents on the matter. Another thing, just really, really quick, because I love pretty stuff, right? My graphics are pretty. Like I like making pretty things for you guys.
It's totally fun. And I love it so much, but your birth plan that you are handing to people, that's not where we put pretty. That's where we just put, I did touch on it.
I'm like bullet points, bold fonts, clear language, like just very, very plain draw attention to the things that are, you know, the most important highlight it, put a box around it, whatever you need to do, but really plain. So that's just very easy to read. And your words aren't getting mixed up in the little pictures and the graphics and the different colors.
And like you can print off your own pretty birth plan that you can have with your partner or whatever, because you know, your partner's going to sit there and read it. If they need to, you want to make it as easy to scan as humanly possible. Your nurses probably aren't going to have 10 minutes to go sit down and read your birth plan.
I'm talking the whole thing needs to be consumed in like 20 seconds. That may be pushing it, but like get it as, get it as clear cut as possible. Okay.
Now, now I'm shutting up final question of the day. Laura wants to know if I want to labor at home as long as possible, love that. How do I know when to go to the hospital? I got this question all the time.
Okay. Um, I think I'm interested to kind of flip this question right away because the goal isn't just stay home as long as possible. The goal is no one is time to move.
So I'm not rushed, scared, or unprepared. And I am not about to throw textbook benchmarks at you. I'm not about to say, oh, 5-1-1, 3-1-1, whatever all those little rules that they tell you come to the hospital.
Then if your water breaks, you need to get in the car and come to us straight away. Those things aren't actually true. I'll tell you a really quick story, a little secret.
Um, with my fifth baby, I was having contractions at 38 weeks, which is totally fine. It was my fifth baby. It made sense for me to be having contractions at that point.
I thought it was going to be maybe possibly labor. I knew in my spirit that it wasn't, but I like, I just told everybody like, okay, like this is what's going on. And just, you know, keep your ear out.
Just make sure that, you know, like if Taylor texts you later, it's probably important. You should probably, you know, check it. Um, but I got to the point where I was having contractions at the five, you know, the five minutes apart, one minute long for an hour.
And that is when they typically tell you to go and seek your medical care. If I was a first time mom and I was at that point, and that's what I heard my birth prep class, I would have gone to the hospital. I might have gotten there and gone into triage and they would have assessed me and say, oh, wow, you are having contractions and they seem to be, you know, coming and coming in, but you're not very dilated.
So maybe we should start you on Pitocin or maybe we should break your waters or maybe we should do X, Y, Z intervention. And then I'd end up with a full blown induction because I didn't have that baby until 41 weeks and three days. She was not done.
My body was just having some contractions. It was having a day. I probably overdid myself knowing me.
So I'm not about to throw those numbers at you. You get to decide when you go in, but here is what I am going to say, because honestly, now you might even be more like, how do you know for sure? Here's what I want to tell you. If you're going to labor at home longer, which I do love and recommend for an unmedicated birth experience, you need to be prepared for what happens if things move fast or faster than you think they will.
Or even if things never get as intense as you've always been taught, because when you leave birth undisturbed, it can really, truly be like no big deal, like period cramp vibes. Like I'm going to take a nap while I'm in transition. So here's what that means.
You need to understand what transition looks like and feels like. Typically, you need to know how to handle a surprise birth at home or in the car without any panic. Make sure your partner is prepared and have your support team on high alert.
Just make sure everybody knows what's going on and keep them updated with everything, but they need to be watching you, not the clock, not your little app that you're tracking your contractions on. The real indicator that it's time to go is not a contraction timer. It's how you feel.
Are you starting to lose focus? Is it getting hard to cope without some hands-on support? Is your gut saying like, hey, we're close. We need to go. If we're going to go, listen to yourself, listen to your body.
If you're educated, you can usually know when it's time to go. And if you miss it or whatever, you have the information you need to handle that possible home birth or possible in the car birth. And it doesn't have to be this panicked frenzy.
People have babies like that all the time. It's a matter of knowing what to do and how to go about it in a cool, calm, and collected fashion. I need you to hear me loud and clear.
You cannot labor at home as long as possible. If you haven't prepped, like you might accidentally birth at home. I had a girl call me when she was in labor and she said, um, she's like, how do I know like when it's actually time to go in? Because my contractions are, you know, this amount apart.
They were like pretty close together, um, over a minute long, which it had been for over an hour. And she was describing like how she was feeling and stuff. And I was like, if you're going to go to the hospital, you might want to consider going like soon.
And she packed up very quickly and they went to the hospital and I think she barely got checked in. And she was like pushing, like she was there for less than 20 minutes. I think she didn't live that far from the hospital.
I'm not trying to scare you by saying you might accidentally birth your baby at home or in the car. I'm trying to instill some empowerment. If your body takes over, I want you to feel ready, not scared.
We know what fear can do to your body and to your mindset. Fear is a sabotager. If baby's coming fast, I want you to feel peaceful, not panicked.
So get educated on what to do. If baby comes before the car or before the hospital or before your midwife even walks through the door, because when you prep for that, you walk into labor with confidence, not a clock. Okay.
Those were some great questions today. I really loved those. Thank you for asking them.
Your questions are helping other moms. I get DMs all the time. Oh my gosh.
I listened to this. It was so helpful. I got one just the other day and somebody was like, I heard this on the podcast the other day.
And I never even would have thought to ask that. You ladies are giving other women permission to do this work. And I think that's pretty freaking cool.
I'm proud of you ladies for doing this work. If you would like to join us inside the birth prep lounge every single Friday, I go live at 1 PM Eastern standard time and answer your questions, do some little teaching sometimes. And I help you guys become the HGIC of your birth experience.
I'm working on some other stuff in there too. Dropping like podcast episodes when those go up, just like a little, you guys can ask questions. You guys can introduce yourselves.
You guys can post your cute little sonograms and your nurseries and your little bump pics, your baby shower pictures, whatever you want to share in there. It's your space to come and prepare with other women who are working towards an unmedicated hospital birth, just like you, but on their terms, you guys are really truly doing this. And I'm, I'm stoked for you.
So come join us in the birth prep lounge. The link is in the show notes for you. And remember, you are not hoping for a good birth.
You are preparing for one. You are not just the patient. You're the head girly in charge.
And you have my permission, not that you need it to act like it. Okay. Have a beautiful, wonderful week.
Take care of yourself. And I will chat with you next time as always happy prepping.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
