For any expectant mother, making a birth plan is a helpful step in preparing for labor and delivery. This goes for women considering adoption, too.

A birth plan simply outlines your preferences for how you’d like your hospital experience to go. How many visitors do you want at your delivery? Do you want to hold the baby right away? Are you hoping to be able to eat and drink while you labor? Do you want music playing in your room?

Keep in mind that this isn’t a list of demands—only your doctor can make the medical decisions. It’s just a statement of how you would like things to happen, if possible.

Obviously, when it comes to labor and delivery, the atmosphere can sometimes get crazy, and not everything goes according to plan. With the complicating factor of adoption, the plan is even more likely to be thrown off. (Doctors and nurses are often quite uncomfortable with the emotions of what’s taking place in their workplace. Very often this is a rare experience for them, and they don’t know what to do or how to act, which can make them awkward and bumbling.)

Therefore, a potential adoption is actually all the more reason to think everything through beforehand. There are issues you need to make a judgement call about, such as:

• Will the hopeful adoptive parents be in the delivery room? (I don’t recommend this—more on why not, in future posts)
• Will an attorney come to collect your surrender signature in your hospital room (again, not recommended)
• Can you have plenty of alone time with your baby?
• Will the nurses give you some peace in order to re-think and re-make your decision?
• Will the baby leave the hospital with you, or with the hopeful parents?
• Who is going to pick you up and take you home from the hospital?

There are several online decision tools that can help you print up a birth plan fairly quickly. You can then modify or personalize it to account for the special factors of adoption.

Childbirth is an amazing, life-changing experience, and it can feel a little surreal. You may be too dazed to express your wishes. If your doctor and your visitors have a birth plan, the details are thought out ahead of time, everyone knows what you want, and you can focus on savoring the precious emotions surrounding your baby’s arrival.