You cannot choose the day your labor starts. You cannot choose how long it lasts. And you cannot choose whether something comes up on the day that nobody planned for.
So when you sit down to prepare for a natural birth, where is your effort supposed to go?
Most women put it into the birth plan. That instinct makes complete sense, because the birth plan is the only part of this that anybody ever tells you to work on. Everyone has an opinion about your wording. Almost nobody asks what you ate this week or who is going to be standing at the end of your bed.
Here is what I want you to know. There are four things you genuinely control as it relates to your birth experience. I call them the Four Levers, because a lever is a small thing that moves something very large. And every single one of them happens while you are pregnant.
First, the honest part: what you do not control
When labor starts. You do not get to pick the day, or whether it lands the week your husband is traveling. Your baby and your body work that out between the two of them through a whole cascade of hormones, and you are not invited to that meeting.
How long labor lasts. This is very bio individual. First time moms do tend to be longer on average, not always, but on average. I have supported labors that ran a couple of hours and labors closer to 30, with women who had prepared thoroughly. Neither one of those women was doing it wrong.
The details of the day. Whether something comes up that nobody saw coming. Whether there is a true emergency, or a real medical reason that the plan has to change. If that is what needs to happen, it is completely okay. There is no shame in it. A cesarean your baby actually needed is a good outcome, and interventions exist because sometimes they save lives.
I name that list so your energy is free for the four things that do answer to effort.
Lever One: Nutrition and Lifestyle
Going into pregnancy healthy and maintaining your health through it has a real effect on your birth outcomes, and here is the specific reason it matters so much.
The two most common ways a completely normal, low risk pregnancy stops being low risk are preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. Your risk status does far more than sit in your chart. It decides who is willing to attend your birth. It decides whether a birth center or a home birth stays on the table. It decides whether you get pushed toward an early induction, whether you are on continuous monitoring, whether you get to eat and move around in labor.
So nutrition in pregnancy is about access. Access to the birth you actually want.
Think about what your body is doing right now. You are building an entire organ from scratch, the placenta, and somewhere around 50 percent more blood volume than you had before you were pregnant. Protein is the lumber for all of it. When you are short on lumber, the build struggles, and one of the first places that shows up is your blood pressure.
What to do this week: get your protein up. A lot of pregnancy nutrition practitioners land somewhere around 80 to 100 grams a day, and it is very bio individual, so this is a conversation to have with someone who knows your body. To go deeper, look up Lily Nichols, look into an animal based approach or the Weston A. Price Foundation, and if preeclampsia is a worry for you, read about the Brewer diet. Fair warning, a lot of this runs against what you were handed at your eight week appointment.
Lever Two: Your Nervous System
The goal here is to spend as much of your pregnancy as possible in a down regulated state, so that when labor starts your body is not already walking in braced.
Oxytocin is the hormone that runs your labor. It is what makes your uterus contract and what eventually takes you off into labor land. Oxytocin and adrenaline do not share a room well. When your body senses threat, when you are up in fight or flight, your system shunts away from oxytocin, because from your body’s perspective this is not a safe moment to be having a baby.
Oxytocin behaves a lot like falling asleep. You cannot fall asleep on command. You cannot lie there and decide to do it harder. What you can do is make the room dark, and quiet, and warm, and put your phone away, and then it happens to you. Labor works the same way. You can set the conditions.
The part women miss is that this does not begin when you arrive at your birth space. If you have been living in chronic stress for eight months, your baseline is already high. Your baby is receiving those hormones right along with you. The way that you live is the way that you birth.
What to do this week: pick one down regulating practice you can do most days. Ten minutes walking outside with no phone. A rosary in the car with nothing else playing. Then get on the schedule with a Webster certified chiropractor. Most women think of pregnancy chiropractic care as being about baby’s position, and it absolutely is. The Webster technique works on your pelvis and round ligaments so your baby has room to get where they need to go. It is also doing a great deal for your nervous system. You get both.
Lever Three: Your Provider and Your Setting
This one may be the highest impact of all four, and the reason is the first list.
Something coming up in your birth that nobody planned for is a real possibility. When it does, the single biggest variable in what happens next is who is standing in the room with you.
Two providers can be handed the same situation. Your baby is measuring big at 38 weeks. Your water breaks before contractions start. One provider hands you options and a real conversation about the actual risks. The other one hands you a policy. Same situation, completely different birth.
It is a little like watching two adults react when a toddler wipes out on the sidewalk. One gasps and scoops the child up immediately. The other waits a beat to see what the child does. Same fall, and the child reads the adult and responds accordingly.
That is your provider. And it holds whether you are planning a hospital birth, a birth center birth, or a home birth.
What to do this week: ask. At your next appointment, ask what their cesarean rate is, what happens at 41 weeks with them, and who will actually be at your birth if they are not on call. Pay as much attention to how they answer as to what they answer. And if you realize you may not be with the right person, it is never too late. I have had clients switch providers very late in pregnancy. The earlier you can find someone and start building that relationship the better, and late is still allowed.
Lever Four: Preparation and Education
You need to know what you are doing going into birth. Birth is not the place where you play it by ear.
We have this cultural idea that ignorance is bliss in birth, that learning too much will only frighten you. I think the truth runs the other direction. When I talk with women who describe their birth as traumatic, so often what they name is the surprise. Something happened, a decision got made, and nobody had ever told them it was coming, so they had no way of knowing there was even a decision on the table.
Informed consent only works if you already have the information. In labor you are deep in your primal brain, which is exactly where you want to be, and it is a terrible place to learn something brand new. You are not going to weigh the risks and benefits of an epidural for the first time at two in the morning with a nurse waiting at the end of your bed.
Nobody reads the car seat manual for the first time in the hospital parking lot. You read it at 34 weeks, on your living room floor, mildly annoyed about it.
What to do this week: get on the floor and practice. If you have never actually gotten into hands and knees, or side lying with a peanut ball, your body should not be meeting those positions for the first time in labor. The free Speedy Birth Blueprint walks you through how to move for each stage of labor to help your baby descend.
Two Women at 39 Weeks
Picture two women. Both are 39 weeks. Both want an unmedicated birth. Both have a beautifully written birth plan in a folder in their hospital bag, and the two plans read almost identically.
One of them has spent five months eating in a way that kept her blood pressure boring, seeing a chiropractor, walking outside without her phone, with a provider she interviewed and chose on purpose, and she has practiced her positions on the living room floor with her husband.
The other one wrote the birth plan.
Those are two very different births walking through the same set of doors. And the birth plan is the part everybody looks at.
Better Questions to Ask Yourself
Instead of asking what happens if your birth does not go the way you planned it, try these.
- What am I eating today?
- Who is going to catch my baby, and did I choose that person on purpose?
- What does my body do all day, and is any of it teaching my nervous system that it is safe?
- What have I actually built that will still be true if the plan changes?
Key Takeaways
- The parts of birth that answer to your effort all happen during pregnancy, not during labor
- Your nutrition protects your low risk status, and your risk status protects your options
- A down regulated nervous system is what lets your labor hormones do their work
- Your provider is the biggest variable in what happens when something unexpected comes up
- Preparation is what turns informed consent from a form into an actual choice
You can listen to the full episode here.
And download the free Speedy Birth Blueprint to start on lever four this week: https://holyconfidentbirth.myflodesk.com/speedybirth
Medical Advice Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not medical advice. It is not a substitute for care from your physician, midwife, or qualified healthcare provider. I recommend consulting your provider regarding your specific medical situation and before making decisions about your care.
