Breathing baby out

[Matryoshka]

Could someone please describe for me how to physically breathe baby out as opposed to pushing baby out?? Thanks.

[Trillian]

I did that with my second baby. basically instead of pushing with each contraction/urge to push, you breathe instead. You know how when they tell you to pant as the head is being born? Like that only you do it the whole time. I had a very quick second stage with her as she descended very quickly and they didn't want her to be born too fast (not sure why, I assumed due to the change in pressure from being in the birth canal to being outside it) and I tell you what, it was harder to do that than it was to actually push because you have to fight the urge to give a good hard push with every inch of your body because it is such a strong and primitive thing to do. You know yourself that the urge to push is strong and uncontrollable and this is basically going against what your body wants to do.

[Matryoshka]

I was never told to pant, i was pushing for what felt like forever (2 hours) and wasn't getting anywhere in the end so had an episiotomy (my choice and the attending m/w's), and then finally he fell out. I really would rather avoid that whole scenario this time.

I'm not sure if i understand how to breathe the baby out though.... do you mean focusing on exhaling not inhaling??

[Trillian]

No, you use the breathing to take the focus off the urge to push. If you are focusing on breathing, then you can't push, kwim? When you push, you don't breathe at all because all your energy is directed at working with the contractions by giving a big push. By breathing them out, its not like you are using the act itself to help expell the baby, rather that you are just letting them do all the work instead of you doing all the pushing to get them out.

You will notice a huge difference in the second stage with this bub anyway. You need a lot less direction on how to do it and because it is usually a lot quicker than pushing the first baby out, then often you don't even have time to think about what you are doing most of the time.

[blue daisy]

hi mummaB

breathing your baby out can also refer to the natural maternal fetal ejection reflex (a phrase first coined by Dr Michel Odent)

an uninhibited and relaxed mother will not always feel the urge to push, but rather the combination of optimal birthing hormones and strength of uterine surges birth the baby

this is how I birthed my second baby...its not a concious thing, it is however the natural path of uninhibited birth and it feels amazing

x

[Indadhanu]

I'm interested in this too...

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I don't have any experience obviously, but my understanding from what i'd read and heard, was that it is kind of like when you need to do a big poo, and it's going to come out but it kind of hurts, and you feel as though you need to push it out, but you breathe and allow it to make its own way out (lol, yes I know we've all got nice and graphic images of poo now ). Well, somewhere I read said it was a bit like that, though I don't know if it was first hand experience or not.

Sorry if that is a bit graphic, but is that about right? Or not?