Birth Plans and CrossFit

Writing a birth plan is sort of like going to do a CrossFit WOD. You've practiced the movements and the skills and you have great expectations of what the WOD will be like.  I recall driving to the box every morning before the sun was up and the anticipation I felt. What would be written on the whiteboard, what limits was I going to push my body to that day? Was it going to be a strength day with heavy lifting or maybe a metcon? CrossFit is all about training and preparing for the unknown. Birth is sort of like CrossFit. You know that baby is going to be born vaginally or through a c-section. You know it is going to hurt, mentally and physically but you don’t know how you will do until you are in the middle of it.  You write a birth plan, which is an outline of how you would like things to go. You have preferences in mind of how you would like to labor and what type of pain intervention you want.  But really it is just like a WOD. You see the WOD for the first time on the whiteboard and immediately you start to develop a plan. Do you need to scale the weight? Do you need to make sure you pace yourself? Maybe you loaded up your bar too heavy and you realize after round 2 that you need to take some weight off. Or maybe you underestimated yourself and you didn't put enough weight on the bar and maybe you need to add some to make your load more challenging. You can develop a plan based on your experiences but you really just don’t know until you are in the midst of it. Maybe that weight is just right but you just need to challenge yourself and push through. Sometimes the battle is more mental than physical. Maybe you have to tell yourself just one more rep, one more round, one more step at a time until you get to that next step or that next rep.

You can read all about birth and the stages of labor but frankly you are making a plan and going in blind. It is okay to have to reevaluate after you start and that is why it is just a plan.

I know in general, how I want to approach this “WOD” if you will, but I don’t know how much load I can bear until I get to that point. I know what I want the outcome to be and I have to be flexible to get to that point. Maybe I have a physical limitation that keeps me from “performing” as I would like so then I have to adapt and make it work for me.  Maybe your hands will tear… maybe other things will tear… ouch! Maybe you surpass your expectations or maybe you fall short.  Either way, as long as you put in the effort then it doesn't matter whether you finished first or last or whether you had to scale or did it as prescribed.