Birth plan generator
Answer what you have a view on, skip what you have not thought about, and print or copy a birth plan to hand to your midwife or ob-gyn. It covers pain relief, positions, who is present, cord clamping, skin-to-skin, feeding, vitamin K and what you want if a caesarean becomes necessary. It runs entirely in your browser.
Birth plan generator
No sign-up · PrivateThis changes the pain relief menu, the cord clamping guidance and the vitamin K guidance — all three genuinely differ, and the tool names the body it is quoting rather than averaging them.
Your birth plan — nothing filled in yet
Where: the UK — quoting NHS
What this document is: A birth plan is a way of letting your midwife, nurses and doctors know what you want to happen during your labour.
What it is not: It's important to remember that giving birth doesn't always go perfectly to plan, and things may have to change at the last minute.
Before you print it: While you're writing your birth plan, talk to your midwife about your choices so they understand and can advise you. The NHS also publishes a birth plan template you can download.
Nothing you type leaves your device. The whole calculation runs in your browser.
How this is calculated
FormulaHow this birth plan is put together
A birth plan is a statement of preferences. It is not a contract, it is not consent, and nothing in it binds anybody. Every body that publishes on birth plans says so, and this tool says it before it asks a single question — because a plan written in the knowledge that it may change is a more useful document than one written as a list of demands, and it is what stops a changed birth being experienced as a personal failure.
How each body describes a birth plan, in its own words
These are not paraphrases. The emphases genuinely differ, and the tool quotes whichever applies where you are giving birth.
- NHS — communication to staff. “A birth plan is a way of letting your midwife, nurses and doctors know what you want to happen during your labour.” And: “It’s important to remember that giving birth doesn’t always go perfectly to plan, and things may have to change at the last minute.” The NHS closes with “Your midwife will be there to help you make the best and safest decision for you and your baby.”
- ACOG — a written outline, and a shared goal. “A birth plan is a written outline of what you would like to happen during labor and delivery. This plan lets your obstetrician–gynecologist (ob-gyn) know your wishes for your labor and delivery.” And: “Keep in mind that having a birth plan does not guarantee that your labor and delivery will go according to that plan. Unexpected things can happen… A birth plan is a great starting point, but you should be prepared for changes as the situation dictates.”
- RANZCOG — guidance for carers and support people. “Birth plans are a way of providing guidance for your carers and support people about the type of labour and birth experience you would like to have.” RANZCOG is the only one of the four that names the emotional cost of rigidity: “your birth plan will be most useful if it is flexible. A rigid birth plan can add to a strong sense of disappointment if things don’t go the way you had hoped for… Your body and your baby will often have plans of their own.”
- Raising Children Network (Australia) — plan A and plan B. “Think of the birth plan as a guide and stay flexible. It might help to talk about a ‘plan A’ and a ‘plan B’ with your midwife or doctor, so everyone is prepared if things change during labour and birth.” It adds the practical step most people miss: “You could also ask for the plan to be added to your medical records.”
Where the questions come from
The question list is the union of four published lists: the NHS birth-plan checklist, ACOG’s Sample Birth Plan, the RANZCOG Labour and Birth patient pamphlet, and Raising Children’s list. Nothing has been invented to pad it out. It runs to eight sections and about three dozen preferences:
- Who this plan is for — your name, due date, unit, and anything in your notes the team should have front of mind.
- Where, and who is with you — place of birth; who is with you in labour; who is with you for a forceps or ventouse delivery; who is with you for a caesarean; students and trainees; a preference for female clinicians. The NHS checklist asks about forceps and caesarean separately on purpose: those are the moments when who is in the room gets decided by someone else if you have not said.
- During labour — staying mobile; equipment (birth pool, bath or shower, birthing ball, birth stool, squat bar, mats and beanbags); the room (lights, quiet, music, photographs, a mirror); eating, drinking and whether you would prefer a saline or heparin lock to a drip; positions; anything you want to avoid.
- Pain relief — ACOG asks this as one question with three answers, and it is a good question because it tells the room whether to offer or to wait: do not offer unless I ask / I would like it, please discuss the options / I do not know yet, please discuss the options.
- As your baby is born — episiotomy; skin-to-skin; cord clamping; who cuts the cord; active or physiological third stage; what happens to the placenta.
- Your baby, straight after — feeding intention; what you are happy for your baby to be offered; vitamin K; rooming in; cord blood.
- If a caesarean becomes necessary — being told what is happening; the screen; skin-to-skin in theatre; delayed cord clamping at a caesarean; who goes with your baby.
- Anything else — in your own words, and your plan B.
Three clinical details that differ by country, and are not averaged here
Cord clamping. In the UK, NICE (NG235, recommendation 1.10.14) says “do not clamp the cord earlier than 1 minute from the birth of the baby unless there is concern about the integrity of the cord or the baby has a heart rate below 60 beats a minute that is not getting faster”; clamp before 5 minutes to perform controlled cord traction as part of active management; and “if the woman requests that the cord is clamped and cut later than 5 minutes, support her choice”. NICE also asks for the timing to be recorded. In the United States, ACOG Committee Opinion 814 recommends “a delay in umbilical cord clamping in vigorous term and preterm infants for at least 30–60 seconds after birth”. In Australia, RANZCOG publishes no timing at all in its patient material — it describes the cord being clamped and cut after your baby is placed on your chest. The tool says so rather than borrowing another country’s number.
Vitamin K. This is a genuine transatlantic disagreement, not a difference in phrasing. NICE (1.11.13) says to give vitamin K “as an injection into the muscle because this is the method that works best. If parents do not want their baby to have vitamin K by injection, offer oral vitamin K as an alternative” — which “may need to be given as multiple doses, including after the baby goes home”. The NHS mirrors this. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the injection, given in the thigh within 6 hours of birth, and is blunt about the alternative: “babies can’t absorb the oral form very well, so it doesn’t work well to prevent VKDB. A vitamin K shot is the safest and best option for all newborns.” Both positions are shown as what they are.
Pain relief menus. Three different lists, not one. The NHS names self-help and breathing, moving and changing position, a bath or birth pool, TENS, gas and air (Entonox), pethidine or diamorphine, remifentanil, and an epidural. ACOG names non-medical methods, nitrous oxide, systemic opioids, a pudendal block, and an epidural or spinal. RANZCOG names relaxation, active birth, heat and water, touch and massage, acupuncture / acupressure / aromatherapy, TENS, sterile water injections for back pain (an option the other two do not list), nitrous oxide, pethidine or morphine, and an epidural.
Skin-to-skin, and the first hour
NICE asks staff to “encourage women to have skin-to-skin contact with their babies as soon as possible after the birth”, and — the recommendation worth writing into a plan — to “avoid separating the woman and her baby within the first hour of the birth for routine postnatal procedures, for example, weighing, measuring and bathing” unless you ask or your baby needs care. If you are not well enough, NICE says to encourage your birth companion to do skin-to-skin instead. NICE also asks for breastfeeding to be initiated “as soon as possible after the birth, ideally within 1 hour”; ACOG puts it as “Most healthy newborns are ready to breastfeed within the first hour after birth.”
Why the caesarean section is not optional
The NHS checklist asks about a caesarean only as “If a caesarean is necessary, do you want someone with you?” ACOG’s sample plan gives it four lines. It is the section people skip, and it is the section that gets used in a hurry, because if a caesarean is decided on it is usually decided quickly. Filling it in is not inviting one. It is making sure that if the plan changes, your preferences change with it instead of disappearing. ACOG’s Committee Opinion 814 is explicit that both skin-to-skin and delayed cord clamping are possible in theatre: “In the case of cesarean delivery, the newborn can be placed on the maternal abdomen or legs or held by the surgeon or assistant at close to the level of the placenta until the umbilical cord is clamped.”
One thing this tool is careful not to claim
“Screen lowered so I can see my baby born” is a real request that many units accommodate. It is not stated on any national NHS, ACOG, NICE or RANZCOG page — the consumer framing exists on individual NHS Trust leaflets, which are local. The option appears in the caesarean section with that said out loud, rather than dressed up as national guidance.
What the tool does with your answers
Every question defaults to “Not decided yet”, and that prints as a real answer rather than vanishing — a blank tells your team you have not decided, which is useful information. The document rebuilds on every keystroke, can be printed on one or two sides of paper with the questions and guidance stripped out, and has a plain-text version you can copy and paste into an email or a hospital portal. Nothing is transmitted: your answers live in your own browser’s storage until you clear them.
Write it knowing it might change. That is the point, not the flaw.
There is a version of the birth plan conversation that does nobody any good. It goes: write down exactly what you want, hand it over, and then measure the birth you had against the birth you asked for. People who have had that conversation often come out of it feeling that something was taken from them, or that they failed at something, when what actually happened was that a labour behaved like a labour.
There is a better version, and every professional body is already having it. RANZCOG says it most directly: “A rigid birth plan can add to a strong sense of disappointment if things don’t go the way you had hoped for.” And then, in the same pamphlet: “Your body and your baby will often have plans of their own.” That is not a warning against making a plan. It is an instruction about what kind of plan to make.
What a birth plan is actually for
A birth plan does three jobs, and none of them is control.
It saves you from explaining yourself mid-contraction. If you know you want to stay off the bed, or that you would rather not be offered pain relief unless you ask, or that your partner is cutting the cord, writing it down means you say it once, calmly, weeks in advance, instead of trying to say it during transition.
It makes you have the conversations now. The NHS is explicit about this: “While you’re writing your birth plan, talk to your midwife about your choices so they understand and can advise you.” ACOG says “Go over your plan with your ob-gyn well before your due date.” Half the value of a birth plan is generated before it is ever printed, in the appointment where you find out that the birth pool is only on one unit, or that your hospital does delayed cord clamping as standard, or that what you were worried about is not going to come up.
It gives you something to change together. This is the part that matters most and gets said least. If a birth changes course, a couple with a plan is not starting from nothing. They know what mattered to them, so they can ask for the parts that still fit. Skin-to-skin in theatre. The cord left a minute longer if it is safe to. Their partner going with the baby. That is why this tool has a whole caesarean section, and why it asks for a plan B.
The section everybody skips
Around one in four births in the UK is a caesarean, and a large share of those are unplanned. The national birth-plan guidance covers this thinly — the NHS checklist asks whether you want someone with you, and that is it.
So fill that section in. Not because you expect a caesarean, and not as a superstition. Fill it in because it is the one part of a birth plan that gets read under time pressure, and because the things you can still have in theatre are more than most people realise. ACOG contemplates a baby being placed on your abdomen or legs while the cord is still attached. NICE asks that if you are not well enough for skin-to-skin, your birth companion is encouraged to do it instead. None of that happens automatically if nobody knows you want it.
Take it to an appointment before you print it
Two practical things. First, ask for it to go in your notes — Raising Children puts it plainly: “You could also ask for the plan to be added to your medical records.” A plan in a bag is a plan somebody has to find. Second, keep it to a page or two. The people reading it will be reading it quickly.
And then let it be what it is. ACOG: “Remember that you and your ob-gyn have a common goal: the safest possible delivery for you and your baby.” You are not writing a set of terms. You are telling a room full of people who want the same thing you want what matters to you, so they do not have to guess.
Sources
- What to include in your birth plan — NHS, accessed
- Pain relief in labour — NHS, accessed
- What happens straight after the birth (skin-to-skin, the third stage, and vitamin K for newborn babies) — NHS, accessed
- Skin-to-skin contact with your newborn — NHS, accessed
- Caesarean section — NHS, accessed
- Intrapartum care (NG235) — recommendation 1.10.14 on cord clamping and 1.11.7 to 1.11.13 on skin-to-skin, breastfeeding initiation and vitamin K — National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, accessed
- Intrapartum care quality standard (QS105), quality statement 6: delayed cord clamping — National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, accessed
- Sample Birth Plan (health tool HT001) — American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, accessed
- Delayed Umbilical Cord Clamping After Birth — Committee Opinion Number 814 — American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, accessed
- Medications for Pain Relief During Labor and Delivery (FAQ086) — American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, accessed
- Labour and Birth (patient information pamphlet) — Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, accessed
- Pain Relief in Labour and Childbirth (patient information pamphlet) — Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, accessed
- Preparing for birth: how to get ready and what to pack (includes the birth plans section) — Raising Children Network (Australia), accessed
- Why Your Newborn Needs a Vitamin K Shot — American Academy of Pediatrics (HealthyChildren.org), accessed