Puffing or breathing? What your breathing does to your nervous system during labour

Almost everyone knows the scene: Rachel from Friends puffing high and fast, "pfoo pfoo pfoo", almost hyperventilating, while Ross and the doctor puff along with her. It is so deeply rooted in our collective memory that many people think this is how giving birth is supposed to go. In our courses we teach exactly the opposite, and the explanation lies in your nervous system.

Two modes

Your autonomic nervous system runs everything that happens by itself: your heartbeat, your digestion, your breathing. It has two modes. The sympathetic mode makes you alert and ready for action. The parasympathetic mode brings rest, recovery and connection. During labour your body wants that calm mode. That is where it produces oxytocin, the hormone that drives the contractions and gives you a sense of safety. Adrenaline is its opponent: it slows the contractions down and keeps your muscles tense.

You can influence that mode yourself. Slow, deep breathing with a long exhale puts your nervous system into relaxation mode, keeps adrenaline low and gives oxytocin room. Your diaphragm drops, your lungs fill better and your baby gets more oxygen. Breathing fast and high does the opposite: it makes you light headed, tightens your jaw and pelvic floor and keeps you in alert mode.

What research shows

In April 2026 the Zanco Journal of Medical Sciences published a study by two researchers from Hawler Medical University in Erbil, in the Kurdish region of Iraq. They followed 118 women having their first child. Half of them received guidance with Lamaze breathing during the dilation and pushing stages, a method built around conscious, rhythmic breathing during contractions. The other half received the usual care.

The differences were large. Of the women who had breathing guidance, two thirds said after the birth that they had experienced little stress; in the other group, none did. In the breathing group the pushing stage lasted less than half an hour for almost six in ten women, compared with one in ten in the other group. And the babies in the breathing group more often had a normal Apgar score at one minute: 93 percent against 61 percent. On the score at five minutes and on complications for the mother, the researchers found no meaningful difference. Their recommendation: make breathing training a standard part of antenatal preparation.

One caveat belongs here. The study is small and the participants were not randomly assigned. At the same time the result fits a broader line of research: a meta-analysis from 2023 also found that breathing exercises shorten labour.

Start today

Sit upright with relaxed shoulders and place your hands on your belly, below your navel. Breathe in calmly through your nose and feel your belly move towards your hands. Breathe out slowly, a little longer than you breathed in. Let your face, jaw and tongue soften. Five minutes a day is enough to teach your body that calm is always within reach.

During labour you use this calm breathing between contractions. During a contraction you breathe deeper and slower, as if you are blowing up a balloon in your belly. What we hear women say most often after giving birth: the breathing was the one thing I could return to at any moment.

Learning together, breathing together

You learn these breathing techniques and many more tools in the PUUR Zwanger pregnancy course for couples. You practise them with your partner, so that on the day itself you both know what to do. For ten years we have been preparing couples in the Utrecht and Bilthoven area this way for a birth full of confidence and calm. See the course dates at www.puur-zwanger.nl.