Throughout my pregnancy, I kept reading about developing my “birth plan”. When I brought it up to my OB/GYN, she looked at me as though I was crazy. Now, I understand why: You have no way of knowing how your body or your baby’s body is going to respond to labor.

I ended up having an emergency c-section, because my daughter’s heart wasn’t responding well to contractions. Thanks to an extremely calm and fast acting medical team, it wasn’t traumatic at all. I healed well, and my daughter was healthy and born without physical trauma.

When I have friends that are pregnant, the only advice I give is to not develop a birth plan. There is no way to plan how your body will react. Furthermore, without attending medical school and spending years delivering babies, we simply aren’t equipped with the knowledge to interpret the myriad of data and what each heart rate reading, oxygen reading, and contraction indicates. Choose an excellent medical team, and trust the years of knowledge and experience they have gained delivering babies.