Checking your breathing rate takes about 60 seconds, a timer, and nothing else. You count the number of times your chest or abdomen rises in one minute while sitting quietly at rest. A normal adult rate falls between 12 and 20 breaths per minute, though the range shifts significantly for children and infants.
How to Count Your Breaths
Sit in a chair or prop yourself up in bed. Set a timer for 60 seconds and count each time your chest or abdomen rises. One rise and one fall equals one breath. Record the number when the timer goes off.
The key detail most people overlook is relaxation. If you’ve just climbed stairs, had coffee, or feel anxious, your count will be artificially high. Sit still for a few minutes before starting. Breathe naturally rather than trying to control the pace, which is harder than it sounds once you’re paying attention to it. Some people find it easier to place a hand on their stomach so they can feel each breath rather than watching for chest movement.
You can also count for 30 seconds and multiply by two, but a full 60-second count is more accurate, especially if your breathing is irregular. If you get a number that seems off, wait a minute or two and count again.
Checking a Child’s or Infant’s Breathing Rate
Measuring a baby’s breathing rate works best when they’re calm or sleeping. Babies breathe faster than adults, and crying or fussing can push the count well above their baseline. Watch the rise and fall of the belly (infants are primarily belly breathers) for a full 60 seconds. Avoid loud noises, bright lights, or sudden movements that might startle them.
For toddlers and preschoolers, distraction helps. Let them hold a toy or listen to a story while you quietly count. If they notice you watching them breathe, they may change their pattern. Counting while a child is relaxed on a parent’s lap or resting after quiet play gives the most reliable number. Starting your observation from the feet up, rather than immediately hovering over their face and chest, keeps younger children calmer.
Normal Breathing Rates by Age
What counts as “normal” depends entirely on age. Newborns breathe much faster than adults, and the rate gradually slows through childhood.
- Newborn to one month: 30 to 60 breaths per minute
- One month to one year: 26 to 60 breaths per minute
- Ages 1 to 10: 14 to 50 breaths per minute
- Ages 11 to 18: 12 to 22 breaths per minute
- Adults: 12 to 20 breaths per minute
These ranges are wide on purpose. A healthy 6-month-old breathing 40 times a minute is perfectly normal. The same rate in a teenager would be cause for concern. When checking your own rate or a child’s, the number matters less as an isolated snapshot than as a comparison to what’s typical for that age group and what’s usual for that individual.
What Affects Your Resting Rate
Your breathing rate isn’t fixed. It responds to your body’s demand for oxygen and its need to clear carbon dioxide, which means dozens of everyday factors can nudge it up or down temporarily.
Physical exertion is the most obvious one. Even light activity like walking to the kitchen can bump your rate above baseline for several minutes. Stress and anxiety trigger faster, shallower breathing through the same fight-or-flight pathways that raise your heart rate. Fever increases your metabolic demand, so your body breathes faster to keep up. Caffeine and other stimulants can have a similar, milder effect.
Environmental factors matter too. At higher altitudes, the air contains less oxygen per breath, so your body compensates by breathing more frequently. This adaptation is noticeable above about 5,000 feet and becomes more pronounced the higher you go. Even temperature plays a role: very hot or very cold air can alter your breathing pattern.
For the most useful baseline reading, measure your rate at the same time of day, in the same position, after sitting quietly for at least five minutes. Tracking it over several days gives you a personal normal rather than a single number that might have been skewed by your morning espresso.
When Your Rate Is Too Fast or Too Slow
In adults, breathing faster than 20 breaths per minute at rest is called tachypnea. It can result from something as benign as anxiety or as serious as a blood clot in the lungs. A single high reading after rushing around the house isn’t meaningful. A consistently elevated rate at true rest is worth investigating.
Breathing slower than 12 breaths per minute at rest is called bradypnea. Fit athletes sometimes breathe at 10 or 11 breaths per minute with no issues, but a new drop below 12 in someone who usually breathes faster can signal problems ranging from medication side effects to neurological conditions.
The rate itself is only one piece of the picture. Pay attention to how breathing feels and looks, not just how fast it is. Visible effort in the neck or between the ribs, where muscles that don’t normally assist with breathing are visibly straining, signals distress regardless of the count. Nostrils flaring with each breath is another sign, particularly important to watch for in infants who can’t describe what they’re feeling. A bluish tint to the lips, fingertips, or skin is a late sign that oxygen levels have dropped significantly and requires immediate emergency attention.
Tracking Over Time
A single breathing rate measurement is a snapshot. The real value comes from tracking your rate over days or weeks so you can spot trends. Some smartwatches and fitness trackers estimate respiratory rate during sleep using motion sensors, which can be a convenient way to collect data passively. These devices are reasonably accurate for spotting trends, though they’re less precise than a careful manual count.
If you’re monitoring your rate because of a lung condition, heart failure, or recovery from illness, write down each reading along with the time, your position, and any factors that might have influenced it (exercise, stress, medication timing). A gradual upward trend in resting rate over several days can be an early signal that something is changing before other symptoms become obvious. Sharing that log with a healthcare provider gives them far more useful information than a single number taken in a clinic.