Ok, so most of us at home having babies aren't out reading managerial strategies. We're diapering infants, reading birth blogs and talking about how our pregnancies are progressing or how we can change the system or how if we can just survive morning sickness one more time, we will be done!

Maybe managerial strategies are what we should be reading for our lives, our families and most importantly, our births.

The second of Stephen Covey's mantras in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is "Begin with the end in mind." On that note..how can you begin with the end in mind in your birth? Your birth business? Your activism? What is the outcome that you want and then step back and find a way to achieve it.

I do a guided thought process with some women, not unlike Covey's "Picture your Eulogy" visualization, which is why it caught my eye. Begin at the end of your birth. Close your eyes, hold your baby and look around you. What are you attached to? What setting are you in that feels most comfortable to you? Who is with you? What are they doing? Who is guiding this process? If these are your end game...how do you achieve those goals? What are your non-compromisation points? Your guiding principles? What are the steps you took to make sure you got there?

This is especially true for VBAC moms, but it's not isolated to them. VBAC moms know a lot of risks simply because they are forced upon them by outside forces but all moms carry those same risks in some form. Birth isn't always a safe business but it is a necessary, formative and powerful one. If you want to have the outcome in the end, a good way of increasing the chances of getting that outcome is to picture it and have a plan that involves some specific goals along the way. This isn't that whole "power of the secret" mantra, this is how to carry out an achieve something. You are the manager of your birth and while you cannot control every motion or risk, you can be an active part of the process, making decisions and being the guiding force with the plan at heart.