Best Birth Plan EVER

Best Birth Plan EVER

This week, I heard the best birth plan EVER. But first, let me preface this with my spiel I give every pregnant lady who asks about birth plans or my take on their delivery. I tell them: It’s your body, your baby, your delivery. My job is to keep you both safe and explain everything along the way. You can do whatever you want, as permitted by state law. My one rule is you get an IV placed. You don’t have to use it, you just need to have it in case you hemorrhage or get sick fast and we need it. You can eat, walk, monitor or not, have cervical checks or not, be induced (39+w) or wait for labor, go medication free or get your epidural as soon as you hit the door, you can be in whatever position that suits you, delay cord clamping, have immediate skin to skin, breastfeed, bottle-feed, use a paci, opt for an elective CS if you listen to my rationale for why it can be a bad idea- because it’s your deal. You can have no birth plan or a 10 page birth plan, as long as you know that all good plans can go to shit and the Murphy’s joke is Birth Plan = CS. I will tell you what I recommend and what I don’t and why. We’ll discuss it all as it comes up. If we don’t see eye to eye on something major, we’ll bring in someone else to weigh in. That being said, the best birth plan EVER: “My clients ask me about my birth plan...
Talking to Kids About Their Bodies: It need not be so tricky!

Talking to Kids About Their Bodies: It need not be so tricky!

What follows are my thoughts on how I talk to my kid about body parts and why I think it could change the world if we all did it EARLY and without made up words. A patient of mine, in for her annual exam, had her 3.5 year old twins in tow.  They quietly, meandered around the exam room while she and I talked.  Then, when I did her pelvic exam and pap smear, they both wanted to know what I was doing.  “What are you doing to her woo woo?”  Like so many women I encounter, this sweet patient shooed them away to sit down.  She mused, “How on earth do you talk to a 3 year old about THIS kind of thing?”   “This” of course meaning her vagina and her gyn exam. (Note: This example is fabricated from the collective of many strikingly similar encounters I have with my lovely patients.  It is NOT conveying a private, actual interaction.  Any similarity to real patient encounters is coincidence.) In situations like this, I’m immediately frustrated and think, what do mean, how do you talk about this kind of thing?  You use your words, lady!     However, after reflecting on my reaction, I had a face-palm-obvious epiphany that made me feel sheepish: the innocent discomfort with discussing intimate body parts with toddlers isn’t a defect or one particular person’s fault.  It likely evolved from generations of people not talking openly about this anatomy.  The grown women I see, like so many of their peers, are often not accustomed to talking matter of factly about genitals.  So, it’s absurd for me...