There Will Be a Crowd

Expectant mothers should be prepared for a room full of people. This does not include those invited by the parents. Depending on the amount of intervention that is requested--think epidural--and required, there will be multiple doctors and nurses in the room during the delivery. Typically the circumstances and urgency of the situation limit the discomfort associated with the lack of privacy, but knowing that the room will likely not just be limited to the parents and the obstetrician may help reduce some of the shock at the crowd.

All Deliveries Are Different

There are general experiences that are identical in all deliveries, but rarely are any deliveries the same. This is important to keep in mind. Often others share stories of quick and painless deliveries on one end of the spectrum to cases of complications and birth trauma on the other end. There is no way to foresee what a delivery will be like and no way to plan for all possibilities. Others stories can be helpful for giving a mother an idea of what to expect, but no mother should expect that her delivery will be the same as another mother's delivery. There really very little a mother can do except plan for what she can and to be ready to have to adjust those plans. 

It Takes Time

While television and movies make delivery into a fairly short sequence of events that happen in rapid succession, that is not how it happens in real life. Not generally anyways. Delivering a baby is a process, because labor, like pregnancy, happens in stages. Delivering a baby does not happen until a while after early labor becomes active labor. And moving from early to active labor can take a while. It is only after active labor progresses to a certain point that the baby is ready to be delivered. The amount of time that it takes to deliver the baby from this point varies from mother to mother. Probably one of the most surprising aspects of delivery is that delivering the baby is not the final part of the process. The placenta that nourished the baby in the womb must also be delivered after the baby has been delivered. 

The Nerves Will Go Away

A surprising piece of information may be that mothers often are not as nervous as they anticipate. The final trimester of pregnancy tends to be challenging and exhausting. The discomfort paired with the anticipation of finally meeting the little person growing in the womb for almost a year helps decrease, or at least distract from, the nerves associated with delivery. 

The most important thing to know about delivery is that there is not really a lot that can be controlled. The baby and the mother's body control the majority of how the scenario will play itself out, so it is good to accept that a lot is unknown until labor and delivery are underway. Being prepared is necessary, but so is flexibility. Thinking that delivery will or must go a certain way is the quickest way to a delivery that is more difficult than it has to be. So make plans, have preferences and make requests, but do not cling to them. Getting the baby delivered while maintaining the health of the mother and the baby is the ultimate goal. 

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