I usually chuckle when I get an email asking how I manage and balance everything so well. I make sure to assure them, I don’t know what those words mean most of the time.
Now I may have editorial content for the blog lined up a month ahead of time, as well as perfectly prioritized to-do list. I am an expert at planning a trip itinerary in advance. I can plan a party down to the detail. I can even have all of the families work, school, or just for fun events entered as alarms in my phone two or three times to ensure we don’t forget.
However, unless organization is required, I tend to fly by the seat of my pants.
Most of the time, I couldn’t tell you what we are having for dinner the next day, more or less what we are having that night.
We don’t make weekend plans till Friday at 4pm.
In fact, we have our friends sign a flexibility disclosure that we may not be able to secure hang out plans till the day or hour before. (wink)
And don’t even bother asking me where each child will go to school and when. We don’t know these complex things till forms are due, and decisions MUST be made.
However, there are some things that require advance notice and a little more thought out organization than hour by hour…
For instance, a birth plan. Or lack thereof…
Did you have a birth plan for your first child? What about the second or third?
I realize that you are either a planner or you are…………….not.
Now after reading the before mentioned, can you guess which category I fall under?
If you guessed that I never have a birth plan, you are just about right. He knew!
My theory tends to be that if you make a plan for the birth of a child, that child likes to spite you, and prove you they have more of a personality than predictability. I decided to go into my first two births with an open mind, and let these babies come when they were ready, in the way they wanted to. This was probably a good thing considering the way each birth happened.
Even though all three of mine came on their due dates, they came in very different ways. My labor with Gabriel started off in a crazy way, but ended up in a paced and peaceful delivery post epidural. Veronica came quicker than expected and without the ability to choose medication. If I had any sort of plan in place, it never would have happened because of the nature of both deliveries. However, I decided maybe I would try out some sort of a birth plan for my third pregnancy and hope this would give me a little bit more control over the result this time. Ha! Max the moose surely laughed. My planned water birth never happened.
You can imagine why a making any sort of plan for the birth of my fourth is probably unnecessary. However, I do have a goal. GET TO THE HOSPITAL ON TIME. With how fast Max came, I am afraid I might have to pitch a tent in the hospital parking lot the week before my due date to ensure Gabe isn’t delivering the baby on the side of the road. Which apparantly, Gabe is perfectly fine with (can I have some of that ease of mind please?).
So there you have it my friends. No birth plan, but to call my midwife with the first contraction, and get myself to the hospital in a timely manner. I may just opt for that epidural too if I was so lucky as to have the option this time;)
Speaking of birth stories, I LOVE to read them. Especially right before giving birth myself which makes no sense whatsoever. I am a glutton for self – antagonization I guess, as I am also busting through seasons of Call the Midwife.Leave me some links if you have some good ones!
*Dress (non-maternity) by Free People c/o Shopbop, a fun similar one here.
