Hospital Bag Checklist for India, and a One-Page Birth Plan

Your bag, and what goes on top of it

Tick things off as you pack them — the list remembers between visits, so you can add to it over three weeks the way people actually pack. Tell it the season and whether a caesarean is planned and the list changes. Print it and the birth plan comes with it, on one sheet.

Pack by 34 weeks

Babies arrive early often enough that a bag packed at 38 weeks is a bag packed too late. Have it ready by 34 weeks, by the door, and tell whoever will carry it where it is.

Keep the papers in a separate folder inside the bag, not loose. In the hour you arrive, the file is what everyone will ask for: the registration card, every scan and blood report, the insurance or TPA pre-authorisation, and ID for both parents.

The things Indian hospitals expect you to bring

Your own mug, and often your own towel. Maternity pads rather than sanitary pads — they are longer and more absorbent, and the ward will not hand them out. Front-open nighties rather than a gown, so feeding does not mean undressing. Cash as well as UPI, because the night pharmacy sometimes takes only notes.

A bedsheet or mat for whoever stays with you: attendants sleep in the room, on a chair or on the floor, and nobody tells you that in advance. A power bank, because the socket by the bed is usually taken by a monitor.

For the baby, cotton and only cotton against the skin: mittens, booties, caps, muslin cloths, four to six onesies, a light blanket. Newborn-size nappies, not the pack of size-1 you were given at the shower.

If a caesarean is planned

Pack for five days rather than two, in high-waist loose clothes that sit above the scar rather than across it. Add a straw, because drinking lying flat on day one is otherwise a two-person job, and a pillow to hold against your stomach on the drive home — speed breakers are the reason.

An abdominal binder helps some women and is not for everyone; buy it only if your doctor has said so, and after the surgery rather than before.

The birth plan, and what it is for here

Many Indian hospitals do not work from birth plans, and a plan handed over as a list of demands lands badly. What a plan genuinely does is give your partner something to say on your behalf while you are in the middle of labour and not able to argue for yourself.

So keep it to a page, mark only what you actually have a preference about, and keep the line at the top: these are preferences, and if the doctor says something else is safer for you or the baby, do that. The questions that most often change what happens are the feeding one — no formula or water unless it is medically needed — and who is with you.

What comes after the bag

The bag is a third-trimester job. The map below shows which tool covers each stage of the next year, and where you are on it now.

Common questions