Focusing on breathing out, and allowing your body to breathe in again when it is ready to, can help to slow down your breathing and allow your diaphragm to work more effectively. You may notice that your breathing also changes from being in your upper chest to lower down when you focus on breathing out comfortably for even a few minutes.
Staying calm and focused during labour is proven to help your birth progress well, and make the experience more manageable and positive. This is because you’ll manage the pain, work with the contractions and conserve your energy. Breathing and relaxation techniques are popular and useful tools to achieve this and can be used by any mum-to-be.
Although they are not complicated by any means they do need to be taught and implemented properly for you to gain optimum benefit. Unfortunately most parent-craft classes give little time to these valuable techniques due to the amount of information which has to be delivered to the antenatal patient.
Benefits during labour:
- Reduces the pain and the intensity of the contractions.
- Helps to save energy so that you have more to use for labour.
- Allows labour to progress more easily.
- Can help you to rest between contractions.
- Helps you to cope with labour better.
This video contains information about breathing and relaxation for labour produced by the Women's health physiotherapy team and midwifery team.
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