Natural Birth and Baby Care.com

Birth Breathing

by Laura
(Peru/USA)

I have both the Pink Kit I'm working through and the Hypnobirth book. I don't know if it's a good idea to use both or not, but my question is that is seems to me they have contradictory information about breathing. I was hoping you could clarify.

The hypno books says breathing in and out of your nose is best for many reasons. However in the section I was just doing in the Pink Kit is says in through the nose and out the mouth. Like a cleansing breathe. Thoughts? I want to focus on one idea and go with it.

Answer:

Hi Laura,

I haven't read the Hypnobirth book, so I'm not exactly sure what their technique is. But I have gone through the Pink Kit and several other childbirth courses :)

I have always learned the technique of breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth (I believe that Hynobabies also teaches this way but I haven't looked at it in awhile so I may be wrong).

I think that when you're in early labor, whichever method of breathing works for you is going to be effective. It's much easier to control breathing early on.

But I've always found that as labor gets more intense and I want to re-focus and center, I've used a cleansing breath. I can remember just before Brennan was born, I looked in my midwife's eyes and she went through several cleansing breaths with me (even using that term) and it really helped me center and open.

With Galen I naturally used the cleansing breaths with the other PK techniques to focus on opening effectively for him.

So if I were to choose I would opt for conditioning yourself to use the cleansing breaths in the most intense parts of labor.

I do think that the most important thing is to keep taking deep breathes and keeping yourself relaxed - you want to avoid shallow breathing, like "panting" because that's not getting a lot of oxygen to you and baby.

As long as you're taking good, deep breaths, I don't think it matters terribly much - but my preference is for practicing with cleansing breaths, and that's what I found I used during labor.