Breathing For Birth

Deep breathing provides life-giving oxygen to your body and mind, and also allows you to easily and gradually slip into deep relaxation. Focusing on the simple breathing techniques in this audio - deep breathing, birth breathing and light panting - will help you achieve a relaxed state, maintain your relaxed state, re-establish relaxation if it is broken, and finally bear your baby down to emergence.

Transcript

This audio is presented by Relaxed Birthing.

Please listen to this recording with caution.

It may cause drowsiness or an unintended catnap.

And never listen to this recording if you are driving any type of vehicle or are engaged in any other activity that requires wakefulness.

Breathe.

Allow your body to settle back into the comfort of the surface beneath you,

Allowing your head to gently lean forwards towards your chest or back onto the pillows behind you.

And when you are ready,

Allow your eyelids to gently close,

Softly closing your mouth,

With your lips lightly touching.

Place the tip of your tongue where your top front teeth and palate meet,

Purposefully relaxing your jaw.

Place your left hand on your stomach over your belly button and your right hand on the lower part of your chest.

Gently inhale and exhale and allow your body to enjoy the wonderful feeling of relaxation that naturally settles over your body as you breathe.

Now as you allow yourself to drift deeper into relaxation,

You can practice deep breathing.

Focus on your breath.

Inhaling deeply and slowly through your nose,

Down deep into your stomach,

And then exhaling very slowly and very steadily out through your nose,

Directing the calm energy of the deep relaxing breath downwards.

Inhaling deeply and noticing your abdomen rise.

And as you exhale deeply,

Notice your abdomen fall.

Inhaling deeply,

Pulling your breath down into your belly.

And with each and every exhaled breath,

Notice yourself naturally settling deeper and deeper into relaxation.

And as you continue to practice drawing breath steadily and deeply into your abdomen,

Turn your attention to your hands resting gently on your torso.

And as you take your next deep inhalation,

Feel your left hand rising.

And then as you exhale,

Feel your hand slowly sink.

Inhaling and noticing that your right hand barely moves.

And as you exhale,

Once again,

Notice your right hand barely moving compared to your left.

And notice how every breath exhaled,

Naturally and deeply brings a wonderful sense of relaxation washing over your body.

Deep breathing is so very relaxing.

It is relaxing your body and your mind.

And you easily continue deep,

Slow breathing.

Slowly and deeply inhaling.

As deeply and slowly as possible.

And then slowly and deeply exhaling.

As slowly and deeply as possible.

And as you continue to slowly and deeply inhale,

And slowly and deeply exhale,

Turn your attention to your abdomen.

And notice with every slow,

Deep breath in,

Your stomach rises.

This movement that slowly expands your abdomen will allow your laboring body to easily and calmly experience surging labor sensations.

Working with the muscles of the uterus to thin and open your cervix.

Continue to breathe deeply,

Smoothly and calmly.

And if you like,

You can mentally count for each breath.

Rapidly counting upwards as you slowly inhale to whatever number that you reach.

And then as you exhale,

Rapidly counting as you slowly release the breath.

And over time,

If you rapidly count your slow,

Deep breath,

You'll notice that you can count higher and draw breath even slower and deeper.

And every time you listen to this or another recording or practice deep breathing,

Slowly and deeply inhaling and exhaling,

You notice that you increase the depth of breath or number you can count to,

As you slowly and deeply inhale and exhale.

So when the time comes for your body to experience labor sensations,

You will instinctively use this slow,

Deep breathing style to allow your body to easily and effectively expand your abdomen.

Raising the long outer muscles of the uterus to assist the lower inner muscles thin and open your cervix.

Continually breathing slowly and deeply to work with your surging sensations and to provide life-giving oxygen to all parts of your body and baby.

And you know at some point during birth,

You will instinctively feel the overwhelming need to push.

It may feel like an urgent need to empty your bowels.

And at some point it is likely you will want to give up or escape.

But these signals are telling you that baby's emergence is just around the corner.

At this point it will become easy to place your awareness only on your baby and your body.

Easily remaining calm,

Deepening your relaxation,

Staying in tune with your body,

Letting your caregivers know you are ready to work with your downward sensations to bear your baby down.

And you smoothly change from deep breathing to birth breathing during contractions.

Staying in a state of deep relaxation,

Deeply tuned into your body,

Able to effectively work with the energy of birth,

You will feel the onset of a downward pulsing sensation and naturally and instinctively follow its lead.

Taking a short deep breath in through your nose and directing the energy of that inhaled breath towards the back of your throat and bearing down through your body behind your baby all the way to your vaginal opening.

So your breath is going back and down as you push towards your bottom.

Then exhale through your nose and go again,

Taking a deep bearing downwards breath towards your bottom and breathe out.

And all the muscles in your vaginal area respond to this breath like an opening rose,

Opening freely and easily as if you are comfortably moving your bowels.

And you easily repeat this motion several times with each contraction,

Taking a deep bearing downwards breath in towards your bottom and breathing out.

And once the surging downwards sensation is finished,

You easily and deeply relax once again,

Giving your body and mind time to deeply rest and relax,

Tuned into your body and you know your vagina naturally opens when you're relaxed,

When you're safe and when you're comfortable.

And as you feel an overwhelming need to push,

You will easily work with the energy of your birth to breathe and bear downwards,

Surrendering to your baby and your body,

Allowing them to take the lead and determine the pace of emergence.

That's right.

As you feel your body bear down,

You will naturally and instinctively follow its lead,

Taking a short deep breath in through your nose,

Bearing that breath down through your body,

Behind your baby,

All the way to your vaginal opening.

And all the muscles in your vaginal area respond to this breath,

Opening freely and easily,

Just as you practiced when moving your bowels in the months leading up to your labor.

And you easily repeat this motion several times with each downwards pulsing sensation,

Taking a short deep downwards opening breath in and breathe out.

And when the time comes to breathe your baby down past the opening folds of your perineum to emergence,

Your carer will ask you to slow the pushing using light panting.

And as baby crowns,

You will lift your chin,

Leave your mouth open slightly and jaw relaxed and breathe in and out lightly and quickly,

As if you are panting like a dog or blowing out a candle,

Working with your body to open its path,

Relaxing the vaginal opening,

Easily allowing the head to slowly and gently move down,

Easily allowing your vulva to distend,

Easily working with your body's natural sensations and easily allowing baby's head and body to emerge with gentle light panting breaths.

Imagine now,

You have traveled into your future,

And in that future you have successfully birthed your baby and you are holding them in your arms.

You feel so proud of your body and your baby.

Your pride swells and as you look upon your baby with your birth partner at your side,

You feel an overwhelming sense of love and connection.

You've done it.

You feel calm,

Relaxed and in control.

You had innate confidence in your body and your baby that they would instinctively know what to do,

So you could remain calm and relaxed.

And this calm confidence is with you now and will be with you always.

Wonderful.

And you know it is important to relax often and well.

And you know it's important to breathe slowly and deeply.

And you can revisit this audio or another one regularly to breathe and help commit relaxing to memory.

Shortly,

I'm going to count slowly from 1 to 5.

And the choice is yours as to whether it's an appropriate time to slip into a deep relaxing natural sleep or awaken immediately.

Here we go.

1,

2,

3,

4 and 5.

Relax into sleep or awaken ready to continue your day.