Birth Prep and Breathing Exercises
Ok Ladies, it’s coming up to the crunch time!
We wanted to draw your attention to the importance of breathing from our perspective, we are not coaches in this but found it incredibly useful in our own deliveries.
So what do we need in labour?
ENERGY? STRENGTH? ENDURANCE? A FOCUSED MIND?
YEP! All the above!
We’re going to look at the “focused mind” section for now and start with….
Breathing
So under-rated overall but so incredibly powerful in labour, we are firm believers in that.
The key to getting your breathing right is all about pace and power, it can help you focus, it can help you stay calm no matter what is going on around you, it can help you push if you stay with a rhythm and don’t overthink it.
Now this is all from our experience as mummies not as hypno-birthing or other professionals in this field so please do explore those avenues if you can see you will benefit from it from what we are saying, there are some amazing resources out there now.
“I don’t know how to breathe”!
I know, as soon as you start thinking about it, it goes but all we want you to do is find a quiet place and practice so when labour starts you are ready to attack!
Slow your breathing right down, inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth, find a focal point and stick with it. I used to practice for about a minute, slowly increasing the power of my breath (not speed) and then slowing in down again over the course of the minute as this is approximately how long a contraction is I would then repeat a couple more times.
When you have a contraction, it builds and builds up to a peak and then starts to come down again. The key point here is to not increase the speed of your breath within this but to keep it slow and controlled but increase the power, so your breath will be stronger.
Remember the more you tense up, the more it hurts as the uterus is a muscle remember so if you are tensing everything around it its going to squeeze more.
So, keep it slow and your mind focused. This also helps if things get out of your control and intervention is needed, use this tool to stay calm, it really does work.
