Which is more important: your birth plan or your provider's?

The Unnecesarean has a new post up, reposting a mother's copy of her OB's birth plan. (He handed it to her husband at the 26-week visit.) Here are some choice excerpts:

* Continuous monitoring of your baby’s heart rate during the active phase (usually when your cervix is dilated 4cm) is mandatory. This may be done using external belts or if not adequate, by using internal monitors at my discretion. This is the only way I can be sure that your baby is tolerating every contraction. Labor positions that hinder my ability to continuously monitor your baby’s heart rate are not allowed.

* Rupture of membranes may become helpful or necessary during your labor. The decision as whether and when to perform this procedure is made at my discretion.

* I perform all vaginal deliveries on a standard labor and delivery bed. Your legs will be positioned in the standard delivery stirrups. This is the most comfortable position for you. It also provides maximum space in your pelvis, minimizing the risk of trauma to you and your baby during delivery.

So much of what this guy has written is distorted or just plain wrong, it's incredibly paternalistic, and violates basic legal rights (the decision to perform a c-section is at his discretion? Um, actually it requires signed consent forms. Signed BY THE PATIENT.)

And I kind of love it. Why? Because it's honest and lays it all out. In the end, your care provider's birth plan carries a lot more weight in the hospital than yours does. This guy isn't kidding about rupturing your membranes at his discretion; at the extreme end of things, he can tell you he's "just going to do a vaginal exam" and then rupture them without ever asking you, and that piece of paper in the corner saying you want to wait until your water breaks spontaneously isn't going to protect you. Even a doula, your partner, or a committed nurse can only do so much ("Whoops! I guess they just ruptured by accident!") And that's why I would say it's more important to get your care provider's birth plan than it is to give them yours. I've said before that if you find the right care provider and birthplace, you don't need a birth plan, and that's because you have found a care provider and learned enough about THEIR birth plan to know that it matches what YOU want.

The mom who posted her OB's birth plan ended up running so far in the opposite direction that she ended up at a birth center with a midwife and was delighted with her choice. But let me say - as some of the commenters on the Unnecesarean were pointing out - that this isn't an argument for women just needing to choose different care providers. This guy is an honest jerk with non-evidence based practices, but he's still a jerk with non-evidence based practices (say that 10 times fast!), there are more out there, and many women don't have the choice to find a new provider. At the individual level yes, PLEASE, find out your care provider's birth plan and make a switch if you need to. But on a bigger level, we need to stamp this stuff out.

Because, seriously, "Delaying [cord clamping] is not beneficial and can potentially be harmful to your baby" - as one of the commenters to the original posting said, this birth plan would be modern obstetrics only if it were written in 1975.