I want to start here: wanting an unmedicated birth does not make you crazy.

I know, because I’ve had someone look me dead in the eyes when I shared my birth intentions and say — and I quote — “Are you stupid? They have these things called epidurals.”

I was taken aback. And then I thought: women have been giving birth unmedicated for literally thousands of years. How is this the radical choice?

But in today’s birth culture, it is. And if you’re planning an unmedicated birth, you already know the resistance that comes with it — from friends, from family, sometimes from the very medical system you’re walking into to deliver your baby. That resistance is real, and it’s why preparation isn’t optional. It’s everything.

I’m Anne — holistic pregnancy and infant and toddler sleep consultant, and a mom who has had two unmedicated births. One in a hospital. One in a birth center. One with surrender, and one that felt like it was on my terms from start to finish. One where I got the outcome but not the experience I wanted, and one that was everything I’d hoped for and more.

The difference between those two births wasn’t luck. It was preparation, education, and knowing how to advocate for myself within a system that wasn’t always advocating for me.

Today I’m walking you through the six steps I believe every woman planning an unmedicated birth needs to take — not to control birth (you can’t), but to give yourself the highest possible chance of the experience you deserve.

Why Hoping Isn’t a Plan

Here’s what doesn’t work: going into birth planning simply hoping it’ll be unmedicated.

And yet so many women do exactly that — not because they’re not serious about it, but because our pregnancy culture doesn’t give us much else to work with. We’ve been conditioned to see birth as something that just happens to us, something too unpredictable to really plan for, something that requires medical intervention by default.

That belief leads to women who want an unmedicated birth but feel overwhelmed, under-supported, and underprepared. And when birth doesn’t go the way they hoped, they’re left with disappointment, confusion, and sometimes something I can only describe as birth grief — a feeling that what should have been one of the most powerful moments of their life didn’t go the way it was supposed to.

Your birth experience stays with you. For better or for worse, it shapes how you step into motherhood, how confident you feel as a new mom, how your postpartum journey unfolds. That’s why we need to prep like it matters — because it does.

So here are the six steps. Let’s get into it.

Step 1: Do Your Pregnancy Mindset Work — For Real

This isn’t optional, and it’s not fluffy. Your mindset going into birth is one of the most powerful predictors of your experience — and most of us carry more fear, self-doubt, and subconscious conditioning around birth than we even realize.

Think about the birth stories you’ve consumed. The screaming in movies. The “horror stories” that seem to find their way to every pregnant woman’s ears. The cultural message that birth is dangerous, painful beyond tolerance, and best managed with medical intervention. That programming is in us, whether we want it to be or not.

Pregnancy is also a uniquely vulnerable and spiritually open time. Things come up. Old fears surface. And that’s actually an invitation — to go within, identify which fears are yours to sit with, and decide which ones you’re ready to let go of because they don’t serve your journey.

Some of the most powerful mindset tools for birth preparation:

Birth affirmations. These work best when you’ve also done the inner work — otherwise they can feel hollow. But when you’ve faced and processed your fears, affirmations become anchors. I have a free 21 Birth Affirmations guide in the freebie vault on my website if you want a starting point.

Journaling and brain dumping. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, get it out. Write down your fears, your worries, what you’re most scared of. And then go deeper: what does this fear mean to me? Where does it come from? Is it mine? Peeling back those layers gets you to the root — and the root is where real shifts happen.

Meditation and stillness. Creating intentional moments to connect with yourself and with your baby throughout pregnancy builds the mental muscle you’ll need in labor.

Having a healthy pregnancy mindset doesn’t mean you’re trying to control birth. It means that no matter which way your experience turns, you have the inner resources to stay grounded, make empowered decisions, and find the positive thread in your story.

Step 2: Create a Birth Plan — Yes, Even If People Tell You Not To

Every time I post about birth plans on social media, the comments divide immediately. Half are excited. The other half — usually moms who’ve already given birth — say some version of: don’t bother, mine didn’t work out.

And I understand where that comes from. But I want to reframe what a birth plan actually is.

A birth plan is not a play-by-play script of exactly how your labor will unfold. Birth doesn’t work that way. What a birth plan is, is an education tool and a communication tool. It’s the process of researching and making intentional decisions about your preferences — and then putting those preferences in a form that your care team can actually reference and respect.

Here’s something I didn’t expect when I created mine: planning for an unmedicated birth actually required me to educate myself on medicated birth too. I realized fairly quickly that a lot of my original intention to go unmedicated was rooted in fear — specifically fear of an epidural. And fear-based decisions aren’t empowered decisions.

When I actually learned about epidurals — how they work, what the experience is like, what the potential risks and benefits are — I could make a truly informed choice. And when a moment in your labor comes where you need to pivot, that’s where an informed choice feels completely different from a defeated one. You’re not failing. You’re deciding.

Need help creating a birth plan? I have a birth plan template and guide in my digital shop — because I know how many women start, stall, and feel overwhelmed without real guidance on how to build one that actually works.

Step 3: Build a Care Team That Is Aligned With Your Intentions

If your provider has made it clear — or even hinted — that they’re not supportive of your decision to birth unmedicated, that provider is not aligned for you. Full stop.

This might feel uncomfortable, especially if you’ve been with an OB for a while. But your care team is one of the most powerful factors in your birth experience. The energy that surrounds you in labor — whether it’s encouraging, neutral, or subtly skeptical — absolutely shapes what’s possible.

When I arrived at the hospital in active labor with my first son, one of the nurses responded to my birth intentions with a flat “we’ll see.” I was confident in my decision, and it still hurt my feelings. It still shifted the energy of that room in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

Build your team intentionally:

Your provider should have experience supporting unmedicated births, should ask about your intentions during prenatal visits, and should make you feel heard rather than humored.

A doula — I cannot say this loudly enough — is one of the most impactful decisions you can make if you’re planning to birth unmedicated. I genuinely don’t know if I would have had my first unmedicated birth without mine. Doulas know the system. They advocate for you when you can’t advocate for yourself. They know what the cervical check numbers actually mean when a nurse’s translation doesn’t feel right. They are your informed, experienced, present voice in the room.

Your support person — whether that’s your partner, a family member, or a friend — needs to understand and be aligned with your birth intentions too. They can’t support what they don’t understand.

Step 4: Know Your Unmedicated Pain Management Options

Choosing unmedicated doesn’t mean choosing nothing. You have real, effective tools available to you — and knowing them in advance, practicing with them, and deciding what feels right for your body is part of what sets you up for success.

Here are the ones I swear by:

TENS Unit. I could genuinely sing this from the rooftops. A TENS unit is a small device with patches placed on your lower back (think sacrum area) that sends a gentle electrical vibration to interrupt pain signals during contractions. As surges peak, it takes the edge off the intensity in a way that’s hard to describe until you’ve experienced it. In both of my births, I had one on — you can rent or buy them online, and some doulas provide them. The winning combination for me: TENS unit plus hip squeezes simultaneously. That was the magic formula.

Hip Squeezes. With your support person or doula standing behind you — hands on the tops of your hip bones, pressing down and inward — this provides counter-pressure during contractions that significantly reduces the intensity of back labor pain. Practice this with your support person before the big day. It sounds simple and it is genuinely powerful.

Hypnobirthing. Don’t let the name throw you. Hypnobirthing isn’t about being hypnotized — it’s about combining breathing techniques with mental focus and the stages of labor to help you surrender into what’s happening rather than resist it. Fear creates tension. Tension increases pain. Hypnobirthing actively works against that cycle. You can take a course, find resources on YouTube, or read a book — just make sure you’re practicing it during pregnancy, not learning it for the first time in the delivery room.

Birth affirmations during labor. When they’re anchored in the mindset work you’ve already done (see Step 1), these become genuine anchors in the hardest moments of labor. Have them memorized. Have your support person use them with you.

Water and movement. Many hospitals have tubs for laboring (even if they won’t let you deliver in them). Birth centers often allow water births — and delivering in water, as I did with my second birth, has real benefits including reduced risk of tearing. Movement throughout labor — changing positions, walking, swaying — helps labor progress and actively manages discomfort.

Nitrous oxide (laughing gas). If you’re delivering in a hospital, this may be available to you. It won’t eliminate pain — it relaxes your mind around the pain, which can be meaningful in a hospital environment that doesn’t always feel warm or cozy. Not a must-have, but worth knowing about.

Step 5: Choose Your Birth Location Thoughtfully

Where you give birth will directly shape what’s available to you, what’s expected of you, and the energy you’re walking into. For an unmedicated birth, this decision carries real weight.

Hospital births are absolutely possible unmedicated — I did it — but you’re operating within a system that is oriented around medical management. There may be more pressure, more routine interventions offered, more clock-watching. Knowing the hospital’s policies before you arrive, understanding your rights (see Step 6), and having a strong care team around you are all especially important here.

Birth centers are specifically designed to support physiological, low-intervention birth. The environment is different — more intimate, less clinical, more woman-centered. My second birth at a birth center was the experience I had wanted all along, and a big part of that was the environment itself.

Home births are also an option for low-risk pregnancies, often chosen with a qualified midwife present.

Whatever you choose, do your research. Ask about their unmedicated birth rates, what tools and support are available, and how they typically handle situations that feel pressure-laden — like labor that’s progressing more slowly than expected.

Step 6: Know Your Rights and Learn How to Advocate for Yourself

This might be the most important step on this list — and the most underestimated.

Especially if you’re delivering in a hospital, and especially if you are a woman of color: understanding your rights is non-negotiable. You are not required to say yes to everything that’s offered or recommended. Policy is not law. And your informed consent matters for every single decision made about your body and your birth.

Some rights worth knowing:

• You have the right to informed consent — meaning your provider should explain what they’re recommending, why, and what the benefits and risks are before you agree to anything.
• You have the right to ask for more time before making a decision, even in labor.
• You have the right to decline any procedure, including cervical checks you didn’t ask for.
• You have the right to request a different nurse if the energy in your room isn’t supporting your experience.
• You have the right to leave the hospital if you’ve been admitted and want to continue laboring at home.

In my first birth, I didn’t know most of this. A nurse gave me an inaccurate report of my cervical progress that had me genuinely considering an epidural at the moment I was closest to not needing one. My doula knew. She quietly told me the truth. My son was born 45 minutes later.

Had I not had her in that room, that story might have gone differently. And I would have had no idea what I didn’t know.

Understanding advocacy doesn’t mean becoming combative with your care team — it means walking in as an educated, informed participant in your own birth, so that when decisions need to be made, you are making them. Not having them made for you.

If you want to go deeper on this, I cover hospital advocacy in depth in my Confidence Pregnancy Method birth preparation class inside Birth Prep Made Simple Toolkit — because the reality is, most women will deliver in a hospital, and knowing how to navigate that system is one of the most empowering things you can do before you walk through those doors.

Your Birth Matters. Prep Like It.

Here’s what I want you to leave with: you can have the birth experience you want. Not necessarily the perfect, everything-goes-according-to-plan birth — but an experience where you feel informed, respected, supported, and like you were present in the decisions that shaped your story.

That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because you did the inner work. You built the right team. You understood your options and your rights. You showed up prepared.

My second birth — the one in the birth center, in the water, with my doula and a team that fully supported my intentions — was not luck. It was the result of looking at my first experience and asking: what could I do differently? What did I miss? How can I show up more prepared?

And then doing that.

You deserve to ask those questions too — before your first birth, not after it. That’s exactly why I’m here.

Take the Next Step Toward Your Empowered Birth

📥 Grab my free resources — Head to empoweredwithanne.com and download my 21 Birth Affirmations guide and 10 Steps to a Calm and Confident Pregnancy from the free vault. These are the starting points.

🎓 Explore the Unmedicated Birth Breakthrough Class — 5 steps to Confident Birth Prep! This is where preparation gets real and supportive. Link HERE. Find additional support in my digital shop at Pregnancy Support.

📋 Get the Birth Plan Template and Guide — So you can create yours without the overwhelm. Also available in my digital shop.

📞 Book a free Explore Call — If you’re looking for personalized pregnancy coaching support, let’s connect. Head to https://EmpoweredWithAnne.as.me/FreeSleepChat to book.

🎙️ Listen to the full episode — Season 1, Episode 3 of the Confident Motherhood Podcast, where I share the full story of both of my births and walk through all six steps in my own voice.

Your birth experience matters. You deserve to walk into it prepared, educated, and confident in the decisions you’re making. Let’s get you there.