Another newbie swim question, or repeat

Hmmm...are you breathing out in the water? Or are you doing your whole breath cycle when you turn to breathe? If that's the case, then I can see how you might feel out of breath since you would be holding your breath while in the water. You should be inhaling when your face is out of the water (I can't even imagine how you manage to do that twice without sinking), then exhaling when you put your face back in the water.

If that's not the case (i.e., you already exhale in water), the only other thing I can think is if you are breathing every 3rd or 4th stroke to switch to breathing every stroke...

Otherwise, I'm stumped.

It takes a while to build swim fitness.   Most people starting from zero, it take 4-8 weeks of consistent swimming and building the yardage to start to see major progress and for it to not feel so difficult You need to be doing more yards.  Start working up to more yards each time you swim.  This does not have to be all at one time but for a whole session.   Concentrate on doing sets with good form. 

Exhale under water and inhale when you turn.  Stop taking two breaths.  This is just practicing bad form and creating bad muscle memory.

Definitely think you are tiring yourself out more trying to get 2 breaths in before you put your head back down to swim.  The point is to just barely turn your head enough to grab a quick breath in the pocket of space and put it right back down.  A previous poster mentioned you should be exhaling under water...this is so you are immediately ready to inhale the next time you turn your head for a breath.  Don't know how far you're turning your head, but my line of vision when I turn for a breath is skimming the top of the water or over to the side of the pool, not anywhere close to seeing the ceiling.

Try just kicking off from the wall and swimming about 10 feet and forcing yourself to exhale hard once underwater, then inhale once only on the roll. Then stop! If you know you're only going to take one more stroke, you might be able to convince yourself to try it out. Do this a bunch of times. Next, try swimming for one more stroke cycle and again tell yourself that you're going to stop as soon as you finish your second roll with a single inhalation. I think if you can break it into small steps like this and make your body/mind realize that it's not going to drown or suffucate, you'll be comfortably swimming with only one inhale per roll be the end of your next session.

 Best of luck!

-Mike

i had this "exact" issue a few weeks ago.   i just went to the pool one day with the idea that i was finally going to only take one small breath of air and not stay in sweet spot that long.  

for me it was more of a muscle memory thing that i had to force myself to do in order for it to become second nature.   i spent several laps just literally forcing myself back down into the water and not staying in sweet spot too long.    just remember to exhale slowly while head is down and when you come up you should be ready for just that small bite of air.

also, i watched the DVD where it shows how to transition from turning to sweet spot to bilateral breathing.   seeing it done correctly on video helped me to understand how to correctly breath and to not stay on your back too long.

hope that helps

im a total swimmer newbie.. someone posted this link to a few videos -

http://www.goswim.tv/pages/5/videos.html

these helped me tremendously! as xmann said, seeing it done correctly is key.

specifically, check out the breathing drills. hope this helps.