Respiratory control requires feedback signals from the viscera, including both mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors. We have previously shown that typical pulmonary stretch receptor (PSR) spike trains provide the central nervous system with ~31% of the theoretical maximum information regarding the amplitude of lung distension. However, it is unknown if the spatiotemporal convergence of many PSR inputs onto second-order neurons (e.g., pump cells) results in more, or less, information about the stimulus carried by second-order cell spike trains. We tested the hypothesis that individual pump cells carry less information in their spike trains than PSRs by recording pump cell activity in adult, anesthetized, paralyzed, artificially-ventilated rabbits during continuous manipulation of ventilator rate and volume. Using previously-developed analytical methods, we quantified the information carried by the pump cell spike trains, and compared it to the same values derived from PSR data. Our results provide evidence that rejects our hypothesis, since pump cells as a group did not carry significantly less information about the lung distension stimulus than PSRs, although that trend was implied by the data. By comparing the response variances to the theoretical minimum, we discovered that the trend toward information loss depends on response strength, with higher mean responses associated with larger response variances in pump cells than in PSRs. Thus, spatiotemporal integration may result in information loss within certain analytical/stimulus parameters, but this is counterbalanced by the consistency of pump cell responses during brief integration times and/or low stimulus amplitudes, resulting in retention of total information.