Birth plan? You're joking

That’s the downside of birth plans: unless the process rattles along as detailed in your notes, you feel pretty cheated. Pauline, 33, had hoped for minimal medical intervention, ‘But I was given pessaries to get the contractions going. Soon they were coming thick and fast and the TENS machine I’d been intent on using (the thing that’s meant to stop the pain messages reaching your brain) just got on my nerves. At one point, I had a pad on my bum and one on my neck and I hadn’t even realised,’ she told me. Hours later, Pauline’s midwife suggested an epidural. ‘Absolutely nothing went according to plan,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter now, but for weeks after Chloe’s birth, I felt that I’d wimped out.’

Second time around, I didn’t make a plan, and just hoped that the baby would be delivered vaginally. The midwives were fantastic, and at no point did I feel that anything was being done to me without my permission. If I’d written a birth plan, it would have been sheer fantasy. As it was, apart from behaving in a more dignified manner instead of weeing all over the floor, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Not that I’m in a hurry to repeat the experience. In fact, to ensure that I don’t have to deal with this birth planning business in the near future, I’m directing my efforts towards family planning instead.