Birth Plans I cover birth plans in my classes and with my doula clients. It is imperative to know that birth plans are not contracts or something that should be inflexible. Birth can be an interesting animal - flexibility is key! However, I feel it is important to do a birth plan and review it with your care provider. It gives you the opportunity to decide what is important to you for your birth experience, make decisions about your care, take an active role in your birth, and helps "make it real" that soon you will have your baby! Personally, I use birthplan.com as my jumping point for discussion of birthing plans with my clients. I find it is very easy to use (just click on the options you want--and at the end, it writes the plan for you, but you can still edit the document!). However, even though I find it to be one of the most complete planning web sites around, there are still many topics that are not covered. Some issues I want to discuss with parents are regional birthing trends, or policies that are specific to your chosen birthing place. By reviewing your Birth Plan with you in full detail, I am better able to serve you as your doula. To maximize our time at the prenatal meetings, I ask that you fill out a birth plan using the birthplan.com model. Then, we can "fill in the blanks" as appropriate based on the exceptions and other information discussed above. The goal is to help you in finalizing your birth plan so that it is likely to be read & respected by the rest of your birthing team.