Deep breathing helps baby to sleep?

[FTEngineerM]

I’ve looked on the good’ol internet but I can’t really find anything, wondering if any other mums/dads have noticed this.

If DC gets really frustrated fighting sleep, I get frustrated, so to chill myself out this last few days I’ve been doing deep long breaths when settling him. Ever since I started he essentially puts himself to sleep for both naps and nighttime, he went down at 8 tonight, earliest in weeks!!

Does he sense my calm? What’s the science? Was it me causing the frustration before?

Or is it just a massive coincidence and he’s just learnt to do this anyway? I doubt this because he seems to calm very quickly when I start.

[Cheeseycheeseycheesecheese]

I think he's regulating his breathing to match yours (that's what my mum told me when I was in the middle of a melt down over ds not settling)
I think it's the act of him slowing down hos breath relax's him and he goes to sleep, it doesn't always work, but the majority of the time it does.

[SuperbGorgonzola]

Yeah, I used to do this when cuddling them to sleep. I feel like it must be calming, surely.

[WednesdayAllTheWay]

Still do this with my 3yo. Seems to work....

[JayeAshe]

In yoga practice, we were taught that making the exhale breath last longer than the inhale breath was soporific, so your observation is not so surprising, and indeed could be useful to many.

[NannyR]

I often do this when settling babies down to sleep - I don't know the reasoning behind it but I always thought that it helps them to regulate their breathing and calm down. It works when calming down toddler tantrums too.

[FTEngineerM]

Thanks for the replies.

How exciting!!! So it’s actually something we can continue, well, that’s going to be an invaluable tool in the parenting toolbox.