Name: BREATHING Techniques for an EASIER LABOR | How To Breathe During Labor | Lamaze | Doula
Uploaded: 2025-07-07T02:15:08.000Z
Duration: 11 min 28 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey parents, most people in situations that are stressful, intense, or painful end up hyperventilating or holding their breath, and this is especially true for women in labor, especially when they are going into their experience uninformed about labor and birth.

In labor, holding your breath or hyperventilating often leads to increased pain, feelings of being out of control, and it poses a higher risk for mama and her baby.

Knowing how to properly breathe in labor is the foundation of staying comfortable, confident, and in control, and you're here to learn just that, so that you can have a happier, healthier, and easier birth.

I'm Bridget, and I'm a childbirth educator and a birth doula, and it's my passion to help parents just like you to be educated and empowered for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

If you're new here, make sure you subscribe and hit the little bell so you don't miss any future videos.

So the first breathing technique you're about to learn is the de-stressor breath, and it does exactly what the name entails.

Helps eliminate stress, because when stress, fear, and anxiousness is eliminated in labor, pain also decreases.

So using this breath is so valuable in achieving a positive birth experience.

Whether you have an unmedicated labor, use an epidural, or have a c-section, the de-stressor breath is going to make your labor experience a better one.

So to do this de-stressor breath, you're going to breathe in deeply and steadily through your nose for four to six seconds, and then exhale through your mouth for about six to eight seconds.

You don't have to go exactly for that amount of time, but the goal is to make the exhale longer than the inhale.

To practice, I'm going to put my hands on my belly, and I would encourage you to do the same, because it helps you focus on where to send your breath on the inhale.

The goal is to expand your belly with each breath, because one, that's where your baby is, so that's where you want to send all your oxygen, and two, because as you expand your belly, you are getting a deeper breath of air using your diaphragm that brings more oxygen into your body to help your muscles, like your uterus, recover better, and your other muscles to rest.

So imagine your belly is like a balloon, and as you're inhaling, you're expanding that balloon, and as you're exhaling, you're releasing that air out of the balloon.

As you release that air, try to do it as slowly and steadily as you can.

So let's try that together right now as I count for you, and then after we practice a few times, I'll let you do it on your own.

So get comfortable, put your hands on your and let's breathe together.

In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, five, six.

All right, so that is the basic gist of how to do the de-stressor breath.

Now to go a little bit deeper before you practice it on your own, I want to remind you that with each exhale, your goal is relax your entire body from top to bottom.

In labor, you want to try to have every part of your body relaxed so that the only muscle that is working is your uterus.

So let's breathe together now for a total of five breaths, and as you inhale and exhale, really focus on your body softening from head to toes.

My bet after doing those five simple breaths is that you're feeling so much more relaxed.

If you're not used to breathing like that, you might feel a little light-headed, or you might have seemed like that amount of time for each inhale and exhale seemed too challenging to accomplish.

This is very normal, and the more you practice, the easier and more comfortable it will become.

And you can practice this breathing technique all throughout pregnancy in groups of five breaths.

And the reason for that is that at the pace of about four seconds in on the inhale and six seconds for the exhale in groups of five will pretty much get you through a surge, or at least the most intense part of it, when you start doing it in labor, since most surges or contractions last usually around one minute long.

And once the surge has passed, you finish off the breathing sequence with a cleansing breath in for as long as comfortable.

And on the exhale, you release every single tiny bit of tension in your body so that you come back to a completely relaxed state.

And really, the more you practice this breathing technique in pregnancy, the more natural it becomes.

So I encourage you to practice it often during your pregnancy, no matter how far along you are, it's never too early or too late.

And to get your birth partner in on it as well, sort of as your coach helping guide you through the breaths.

And to help you practice, you can check out this guided breathing meditation that I created just for you to use in labor to actually breathe along with me.

During labor, you can use this breathing technique from early labor to active through transition.

And even while pushing, although you are going to learn another breathing technique specifically for pushing.

Now, before we jump into that second way of in labor, I want you to know that breathing is just one of the ways to find comfort and calm in labor.

And there are so many other techniques that you and your partner can utilize to make labor more comfortable and efficient.

And I teach all of those techniques in my built to birth online course that you can access down in the link below.

So during the pushing stage, it's important to remember that your baby wants to be born and that in most scenarios, you don't have to use all your power and might to make that happen.

So instead of having the pushing your baby out, let's reframe it to breathing your baby out.

This breath is a lot more flexible and active than the de-stressor breath.

The de-stressor breath is about letting go and total relaxation.

And the J breath is helping move your baby from womb to world.

So to do it, you'll breathe in as fully as comfortable to you.

And as you exhale, you will send your air and your energy down to the womb to your baby through the birth canal and out the vagina in a J shape.

And the main part that I want you to focus on is the exhale.

Your baby is not being born out of your mouth, obviously.

So we don't want the energy and air of your breath escaping through your mouth.

If you put your hand in front of your mouth and breathe in through your nose and then blow out through your mouth as you would with the de-stressor breath, you can feel all that air escaping through your mouth onto your palm.

But with the J breath, we want to send that energy down, down, down.

So to do that, we create a deep and low moan or moo like this.

So now with that low moan, put your palm in front of your mouth, inhale, and then moo, moo or ah.

And notice the difference of the air against your hand.

If you're doing it correctly, you should feel very little air against your hand.

And as you exhale, due to the low moo or groan, you'll almost naturally tighten your belly from the top under your breasts downward towards your vagina as you send your air downward.

But you can also mindfully be tightening your abdominal muscles as well so that as you're mooing or moaning, you're also gently but effectively moving your baby down and out.

So let's try that together for just three breaths.

And your exhale should be significantly longer than your inhale.

It's going to sound a little funny, but practicing it now is going to help you actually do it well in labor.

So inhale purposefully and then breathe down as you tighten your belly.

You notice that I made different noises on the exhale.

And no matter what noise you make while you are breathing your baby out, you want to keep it focused low and deep into your body so that you are making that J breath.

Now this breath does take a bit of practice and a great time to do it is when you're pooping because it gives you a sense of how to use your breath in rhythm with your body's instinct to push.

Like the de-stressor breath, I encourage you to practice this during pregnancy so that it becomes natural enough to use it during labor.

And don't worry, you're not going to birth your baby now unless your body and baby are ready by doing this breath.

You don't however need to practice this breathing technique as much as the de-stressor breath, so I would focus the majority of your breathing practice on the de-stressor breath.

If you want to take a deeper look into breathing your baby out, you can also check out this video up here.

Now the foundation is just the beginning of whatever you're building.

And in labor, breathing is just the start.

So now that you know the basics of breathing, there is still so much to to walk into your birth space totally educated, empowered, and ready for a beautiful birth.

In the Built to Birth online course, you learn so many other comfort measures from affirmation meditations to pressure points to light touch massage that will help build onto the foundation that you've already started to achieve a happier, healthier, and easier birth.

Plus you'll learn loads more on common interventions, how to avoid them, how to advocate for yourself, and how to prepare yourself for birth, body, mind, and team.

You can check out the Built to Birth course down below, or if you're not quite ready to commit, feel free to take the free mini birth class which you can also access down below in the descriptions.

Education is power parent, so I'll be seeing you very soon in the Built to Birth course.