Aetna

Your Birth, Your Way: Designing A Birth Plan that Amplifies Your Voice

Bintou Diarra Editorial Lead MS2: Alpert Medical School of Brown University

December 9, 2025

The Shared Decision Making Toolkit helps you name your preferences, make informed choices, and prepare for every phase–from prenatal to postpartum.

Welcoming new life is an extraordinary feat! Just as each of us are unique, birth for each of us will be unique. No two births unfold in the same manner, and there is no reference point for the perfect birthing experience for every expectant parent. However, a powerful tool exists that expectant parents can carry into their labor to best-ensure the honoring of their voices, values, and wishes—a birthing plan, or what we often call, birth preferences.

Mama Glow and Aetna’s campaign centers the cruciality of this resource in the co-branded Shared Decision-Making Toolkit, which aims to enable expectant parents to reclaim power during the overwhelming moments of one’s perinatal and early postpartum experience. As part of the Your Birth, Your Voice campaign, the Shared Decision-Making Toolkit bridges the gap between informational support and actionable tools for empowerment. Here we discuss tips and strategies for best-utilizing the Birth plan embedded within the toolkit.

Mindful Thinking

A positive, informed mindset is one of the strongest predictors of a satisfying birth experience. Preparation doesn’t mean rigid expectations; instead, it’s about understanding what might happen and feeling confident in your ability to navigate the process. Learning about the stages of labor, what contractions feel like, how your body physiologically works during birth, and what choices you may face helps reduce fear and increase a sense of control. Many parents benefit from childbirth classes, hypnobirthing courses, or watching evidence-based educational videos that break down interventions, coping strategies, and typical timelines. Practicing relaxation techniques—such as guided breathing, visualization, mindfulness, or progressive muscle relaxation—can help you stay centered when contractions intensify. It’s also valuable to explore your personal goals and emotional needs: Do you hope for an unmedicated birth, or do you want to keep all pain relief options open? How do you typically handle stress and physical discomfort? By identifying these early and discussing them with your care team, you create a mindset that is flexible, prepared, and empowered.

Your Birth. Your Voice.

Enter your details to get instant access to our award-winning Shared Decision-Making Toolkit. Prepare for your pregnancy and childbirth journey, equip yourself with valuable resources and tools to make informed choices and ensure your pregnancy, labor and birth experience aligns with your desires and values.

Framing the Birth Plan

Let’s start by establishing a definition that captures the full scope of the birth plan’s role in your journey. The birth plan is a chance to explicitly define the aspects of your birthing experience that matter most to you. The Birth Plan we designed for you is complete with checklists that help you explore every facet of the birth experience, including the unexpected. Do you want the freedom to walk or change positions – choose from upright, squatting, side-lying, hands-and-knees? Would you like sips of water, ice chips, or light snacks? What are your preferences regarding induction, membrane sweeping, breaking waters, and Pitocin augmentation? It even includes newborn care instructions like immediate skin-to-skin contact, newborn screening procedures and an infant feeding plan. Rather than standing as a rigid script for what must happen, the birth plan is a thoughtful map that helps guide communication, decision-making, and care. In other words, the birth plan is about clarity, rather than control. It is about heightening your sense of safety and agency—not providing a false sense of predictability of the birthing process. Because birth is not predictable.

Birthing Options & Support

As you begin formulating your birth plan, think about preferences for location and birthing methods. In the guide, we not only help you to identify the kind of setting in which you’d like to deliver your baby, but also optimal locations for delivery. We encourage you to think about the type of delivery you desire and what is possible given your health history. The people who accompany you during labor can profoundly affect your birth experience, both emotionally and physically. A supportive birth partner—whether a spouse, friend, or family member—can help advocate for your preferences, provide comfort, and keep you grounded through reassurance or practical assistance. Many parents also choose to hire a doula, a trained non-clinical support professional who provides continuous emotional and physical comfort, guiding you with positioning suggestions, breathing support, and encouragement. While doulas are not a replacement for medical providers, as members of your care team, they can help bridge communication between you and healthcare staff while helping you navigate decisions with clarity. It’s also helpful to talk openly with your support team beforehand about what kind of atmosphere you want: quiet encouragement, active coaching, or minimal conversation. If you have a partner, consider how you want them involved—holding your hand, offering counter-pressure, managing the environment, or simply staying close. Clear communication among everyone in the room ensures that your support team works together smoothly and that your voice and comfort remain central throughout the birth.

Stages of Labor, Support Measures, and Medical Interventions

In this part of the birthing plan, readers are encouraged to outline their preferences for each stage of labor. While the laboring and birthing process are delineated into fixed phases, we understand that the process of bringing an infant to earthside is anything but. In this section, you can name your preferences for electronic fetal monitoring through the first phase of labor, the use of interventions in the progression of labor, the use of comfort measures for pain management, and delayed umbilical cord clamping. Additionally, you can list your preferences regarding the degree of touch between you and your baby after delivery.

The birthing plan includes an apt disclaimer: this outline, much like any other working document for one’s laboring and birthing preferences, is meant to provide a general overview of some of the decisions you can explore. Your lived birthing experience may deviate from what is written here, and some decisions may be dependent on what your insurance is able to cover. The process of working through these decisions heightens your agency by giving you a greater understanding of what is modifiable. Share this tool with your doctor or midwife and stay actively engaged in the process.

About the Collaboration

Mama Glow and Aetna have come together to advance maternal health and ensure that more families receive the support and resources they need to make informed decisions about their care.

As part of this collaboration, Mama Glow trained 250 Aetna Nurse Care Managers through a Doula Competency Training Program, building bridges between clinical care and community-based support. In addition, Mama Glow developed a Shared Decision-Making Toolkit to help expecting parents prepare for key conversations with their providers, better understand their options, and advocate for the birth experiences they want and deserve.

This toolkit is part of a shared commitment to honoring patient autonomy, deepening provider-patient communication, and closing gaps in maternal health through practical, culturally relevant tools and training.

About Aetna

Aetna, a CVS Health company, serves an estimated 36 million people with information and resources to help them make better informed decisions about their health care. Aetna offers a broad range of traditional, voluntary and consumer-directed health insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental and behavioral health plans, and medical management capabilities, Medicaid health care management services, workers’ compensation administrative services and health information technology products and services. Aetna’s customers include employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, health care providers, governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups and expatriates. For more information, visit Aetna.com (e.g., clinical diagnoses, eligibility criteria, participation in a disease state management program).