My Birth Preferences
A Better Way to Build Your Birth Plan
This guide helps you plan your hospital birth. Write down what matters to you. Share it with your care team and support people so they know what you want.
This decision aid was created by Kari Radoff (CNM) and a team of public health experts, with feedback from pregnant people and perinatal care providers. Information and data in this decision aid are based on the most recent available Cochrane reviews, systematic reviews, and clinical guidelines by nationally accredited maternal-child health organizations.
Like all Partner to Decide tools, this decision aid is the intellectual property of Partner to Decide and its lead authors. You may use the decision aid as is but you cannot modify the decision aid without written consent. This version was last updated in June 2026.
Please reach out if you need support accessing, printing, or using the decision aid or if you have feedback or suggestions on how to make the decision aid better.
About
-
This decision aid was made by a group of public health experts, with feedback from pregnant people and perinatal care providers. This project was led by Kari Radoff, a certified nurse-midwife, with support from the Hillman Emergent Innovation program, a grant program of the Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation.
-
This decision aid can be used by anyone planning a hospital birth.
Pregnant women and birthing people can use the decision aid to support conversations with their care team.
Care providers can give this to their pregnant patients to support high quality conversations about birth preferences.
This is designed to be printed on 11x17” paper with a 8 1/2x11” insert.
-
Suggest it! Birth plans are associated with lower rates of cesarean births. This can be a good way to introduce the concept of using a birth planning tool for all patients to your care practice and/or hospital. Using a decision aid like this ensures that ALL pregnant women and birthing people planning a hospital birth know what their options are and can work with their care team to have the best possible birth experience.
-
Hospitals can request presentations and technical assistance from Partner to Decide to support implementation and evaluation. Please reach out to info@partnertodecide.org to start the conversation. You can also order laminated and printed copies from us to support implementation.
-
We would love to hear from you about how our tools could improve. Feel free to email us your thoughts at info@partnertodecide.org
Our tools are free. Support us today by making a donation.
Using our decision aid? Want it in more languages? Make a tax-deductible donation if you can.