Breathing

heres the lowdown

🌟 Breathing should be slow, deep, controlled and conscious/voluntary

🌟 Breathing techniques alone are not likely to be effective, but when combined with other pain relief methods (natural or medical) they appear beneficial

• Methods to combine with breathing:

• Guided imagery

• Visualization

• Hypnosis

• Continuous labor support

• Progressive muscle relaxation

• Other

Main Research Findings:

🔸 Breathing should be conscious, not automatic (Breathing for Pain Relief 1:50)

• Usually used with other relaxation methods which makes it difficult to conclude whether research findings are related to breathing or the techniques combined with it

🔸 Central Nervous System Control (CNSC) (Breathing for Pain Relief 2:50):

Theory that focusing on breathing can make labor sensations seem less unpleasant:

• Interrupts pain signals to your brain, gives you something positive to focus on

• Stimulates release of endorphins (natural pain relieving hormones)

• Helps you reframe thinking about labor (view it as positive, productive, and manageable)

🔸 Abdominal breathing (Breathing for Pain Relief 3:40)

• Just a few minutes of practicing this can alter your brain waves in a positive way, increasing relaxation response, decreasing stress hormones, decreasing blood pressure, and increasing oxygen levels

🔸 Most common non-drug comfort measure in one study, rated least helpful of all (doesn’t specify natural or medical, so I assume it included all) pain relief methods in another study (Breathing for Pain Relief 4:25)

🔸 Study findings (10:50)

• Only one recent study that has looked at breathing techniques on their own compared to none, did not find any differences between groups

• Other studies that combined breathing with other methods benefited the birthing people