The first-ever exercise that you will start during your pregnancy is breathing exercise. Whether it’s a healthy pregnancy or a complicated one, your healthcare practitioner will advise you to do breathing exercises regularly since it will be useful for managing your labor. Is breathing exercise that helpful for labor? If so, in what way and what is the science behind it? Let’s take a look at it briefly.

In what way is breathing exercise helpful?
         Before you hold your baby in your hands for the first time, the most important thing to go through is labor. Though it is quite challenging, when proper breathing techniques are learned, it will help you tremendously for your birthing. The following are the key benefits of using breathing exercises in labor:

1. Increases the oxygen supply
         During labor, the oxygen demand for both the mother and the baby increases by 53 percent. To cope with this oxygen demand, doing breathing exercises improves the circulation thus resulting in faster transportation of oxygen to the muscles.

2. Preventing hyperventilation
         Taking heavy breaths during labor makes you feel 'out of breath' and in severe cases even causes loss of consciousness. To avoid these, certain types of breathing techniques are helpful.

3. Reduces the intensity of labor pain
         There are two easier ways to reduce pain during labor: one is that when breathing is performed consciously, there will be a release of endorphins which are also known as the ‘happy hormones’, from the brain which interrupt the transmission of pain signals. The second is that focusing on your breathing helps you to distract and change your view of labor as manageable.

4. Avoids fatigue
         Breathing helps to conserve energy thereby preventing fatigue and the mother will stay more active. An average person takes a breath in and out about 15 times in a minute with a Tidal volume of 333ml ( Amount of air taken in and out of the lungs for each breath). During labor, this is increased to 20 breaths per minute with a Tidal volume of just 250ml. This is why there is severe exhaustion during labor. In such cases doing slow and deep breathing exercises will increase the tidal volume thereby avoiding exhaustion and tiredness.

How do breathing techniques work?
         During labor, due to the strong contractions of the uterine muscle, there is an increasing demand for blood flow to the uterus. The uterus gets its blood supply in labor during the non-contraction times. When you breathe with anxiety and the stress of labor you tend to take shallow frequent breaths which are also called  hyperventilation, which will increase the amount of oxygen in the blood more than required, which will, in turn, increase the alkalinity of the blood. These biochemical changes can cause improper uterine contraction and prolong labor. Hence you will experience an increase in pain. Thus, to prevent the above said happenings it is recommended to always adopt phasic breathing patterns (breathing techniques). Breathing techniques are not only helpful in labor, when done in pregnancy it helps with maintaining blood pressure and increasing the blood supply to the baby via the placenta.