Reflections
The Power of Breathing
Can you create a shorter, easier birth by simply breathing? The science says by aligning the uterine muscles for maximum efficiency yields the possibility of a shorter, easier birth. But how can you achieve this?
During your birthing time, as your pressure waves increase in strength, taking slow breaths that fill your lungs through your waves maximizes the effectiveness of the vertical muscles of the uterus. Thus, it works more efficiently in drawing up the lower circular muscles, and thinning and opening the cervix.
By maximizing your lung capacity through abdominal breathing you are fueling your body with oxygen. Abdominal breathing has many names: slow breathing, belly breathing, diaphragmatic breathing, etc. Using the diaphragm to inhale and expand the belly and allowing the belly to shrink with the exhale, it is slow and controlled. This method of breathing fills the belly rather than causing the shoulders to move up and down. When breathing makes the shoulders move, it is shallow breathing that uses only the upper lobes of the lungs while abdominal breathing maximizes all five lobes of the lungs.
The research suggests that breathing for comfort works by interrupting the transmission of pain signals by providing something positive to focus on. It may also release endorphins, and help the birthing person reframe their thinking about birth to be positive, productive, and manageable.
Rebecca Dekker of Evidence Based Birth reports in her article Breathing for Pain Relief during Labor, “Electroencephalography (EEG) studies on this type of abdominal breathing have found that even just a few minutes of using this type of breathing alters your brainwaves in a positive way, increases your relaxation response, decreases your stress hormones, decreases your blood pressure, and increases your oxygen levels.”
So remember, breathe for you, breathe for baby, and breathe for your uterus. Transform your thinking into a powerful tool for a faster, easier birthing time.
Prepare Your Mindset for the Birth You Desire
Can you remember being a child and wanting something so intensely that it’s all you thought about, talked about, and no matter what anyone else told you, you simply stuck with it? This childlike tenacity and determination is the stuff of pure creation and magic. Really, it’s not magic at all, but rather a law of nature like gravity. What you focus on will expand and be attracted to you and will therefore become your reality.
Sounds easy right?
Well, it can be when you know how the mind works and adding in some intention, focused effort, and childlike tenacity and voila.
The mind does exactly what it thinks you want it to do and what it thinks is in your best interest.
Let’s say for example you’re 15 years old, watching a movie with a terribly portrayed birth and, while horrified, you say to yourself “I would die if I had to go through that”. Fast forward 15 or so years and either you will have a hard time getting pregnant or be terrified of birth when you do conceive.
Since events can have a great effect on us, it’s the meaning and interpretation of the event or scene that imprints in the mind. We know our mind controls our thoughts and feelings which affects our actions in life.
How you speak to yourself about birth, what you focus on, and any fears you have forms a belief system in us.
Throughout your life only let positive thoughts and phrases imprint in your mind.