The Other Side of the Glass

Part One was officially released June 2013 in digital distribution format. To purchase to to www.theothersideoftheglass.com If you were a donor and want to download your copy send an email to theothersideoftheglassfilm@gmail.com.

The trailer

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Call me feminist because I care about women

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
-- Rebecca West

The thing about the “home birth debate” that really, really bothers me is also a concern I have had for years throughout my professional career-life and adult life as a woman.Women hurt other women deeply. No where is this more evident and more damaging than in birth.

I know I have hurt other women in the process of just trying to live my own scrambled life of pursuing a career, raising children, divorce, remarriage, divorce. I have tried not to. I try to respect others’ differences and needs – and I see we are all women trying to make it in a world that is still controlled by archaic, patriarchal systems.

Men who dominate patriarchial systems are also controlled by the systemizing of birth and are at the mercy of brain imprinting from their own labor and birth when their mother was drugged and violated in their birth.Today, many women cringe at the word feminist. Certainly we women all like the benefits we women enjoy in America -- careers as airplane pilots, engineers, physicians, lawyers. Women can own property and can s tart a business, selling property even. A woman can conceive, give birth to and raise a child alone without that child being openly ostracized as a “bastard.”

The list goes on and on for what a woman is now able to do that women of age fifty years ago never dreamed of. Professionally, we are no longer nurses, secretaries, and teachers unless that is our calling. Our elders - our sisters, the feminists made that possible for us.

They fought and sacrificed for our rights, our equality, and our CHOICE. Nursing was one of the jobs that opened many doors for women. Women, as the subordinate group acquiesced to those in power in order to be there in the workplace and to advance the profession. There has been a large price to pay for woman being more like men in the world and having birth taken from the control of women. Women in medicine and women cared for in medicine are very wounded.

Women hurt each other in many ways because of their wounding. Women use words and emotions to fight – beginning very early in life. Women KNOW what will hurt the other person, and when they too are wounded, they will use it, knowing how deeply women feel their feelings. I wonder a lot about the lack of trust between women.

Our lives as mothers are so vulnerable. No other time in life are we as vulnerable as when we are bringing our new baby into this world. No other time in life are we in need of nurturing and support of other women, protection from men, and so vulnerable to harm, disregard, and control. As mothers, no matter how old our child is, no other aspect of our lives can bring us to our knees like the disrespect or disregard for our selves, our decisions, and our lives with our children.

You can call it New Age or whatever you wish, but it seems to me that in this human world everything works upon a concept of balance between the masculine and the feminine. This life is about balance and partnership, respecting the other within the self. Jesus was conceived by God, of the Heavens and born of a woman, an earthly woman, Mary. This makes Jesus and each of us a spiritual, human being. My Native American ancestors refer to Mother Earth and the Father Sky that we each embody. We are each of the earth and the heavens. Born of the male and the female. There is no doubt in my mind, as history shows this over and over, that when these are out of balance, terrible things happen. Historically, in our culture where the feminine is disregarded women have been treated brutally in birth, and they still are since the introduction of male dominated medicine.

Even though American women are treated better and have more rights than anywhere in the world, we still have astounding incidence of domestic violence, rape, and a pornographic industry based on violence (sexual) and exploitation of women. Apparently, when societies were more balanced or even matriarchal, those cultures were not as violent. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think the majority of women today in the US who tend to devalue the feminine, are capable of running a non-violent matriarchal society. Women have taken on too much of the male persona and denied their own feminine. This is what allows them to betray other women emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Far from being capable of creating supportive, nurturing and creative collectives, my experience of many women today is that they are very traumatizing to other women. Nowhere is the traumatizing of women by women worse than in the current medical care during birth and in the debates about birth -- everywhere it is being discussed.

The lack of compassion and regard for other women is astounding. Rather than explore and heal her own inner woundedness, women are trying to fight in this world for her place in masculine ways that harm other women. I see the profession of midwifery as an attempt to return the self and the world to balance. It is a necessary action of healing something that has been very wounded in order to return the world to balance. I do believe that what is necessary is for every woman to heal her feminine self.

I know many women who support and desire natural birth and homebirth, who seek diligently to stay out of hospital’s harm. It almost always leads a woman to healing her feminine self, embracing a more natural life in many ways, and becoming more aware of the planet some call Mother Earth – because the earth nourishes us and supports us.

"Peace on earth begins with birth"

No comments:

"Soft is the heart of a child. Do not harden it."

A public awareness reminder that things that happen behind the scenes, out of our sight, aren't always as rosy as we might think them to be. Perhaps its a restaurant cook who accidentally drops your burger on the floor before placing it on the bun and serving it to you. Here it's an overworked apathetic (pathetic) nurse giving my newborn daughter her first bath. Please comment and rate this video, so as to insure that it is viewed as widely as possible, perhaps to prevent other such abuse. -- The mother who posted this YouTube. How NOT to wash a baby on YouTube Are you going to try to tell me that "babies don't remember?" There is no difference to this baby's experience and the imprinting of her nervous system/brain and one that is held and cleaned by the mother or father either at the hospital or at home? By the way, this is probably NOT the baby's first bath. The nurse is ungloved. Medical staff protocol is that they can't handle a baby ungloved until is has been bathed (scrubbed if you've seen it) because the baby is a BIO-HAZARD -- for them. Never mind that the bio-hazard IS the baby's first line of defense against hospital germs.

Missouri Senator Louden Speaks

Finally, A Birth Film for Fathers

Part One of the "The Other Side of the Glass: Finally, A Birth Film for and about Men" was released June, 2013.

Through presentation of the current research and stories of fathers, the routine use of interventions are questioned. How we protect and support the physiological need of the human newborn attachment sequence is the foundation for creating safe birth wherever birth happens.

Based on knowing that babies are sentient beings and the experience of birth is remembered in the body, mind, and soul, fathers are asked to research for themselves what is best for their partner and baby and to prepare to protect their baby.

The film is designed for midwives, doulas, and couples, particularly fathers to work with their caregivers. Doctors and nurses in the medical environment are asked to "be kind" to the laboring, birthing baby, and newborn. They are called to be accountable for doing what science has been so clear about for decades. The mother-baby relationship is core for life. Doctors and nurses and hospital caregivers and administrators are asked to create protocols that protect the mother-baby relationship.

Men are asked to join together to address the vagaries of the medical system that harm their partner, baby and self in the process of the most defining moments of their lives. Men are asked to begin to challenge the system BEFORE they even conceive babies as there is no way to be assured of being able to protect his loved ones once they are in the medical machine, the war zone, on the conveyor belt -- some of the ways that men describe their journey into fatherhood in the medicine culture.

Donors can email theothersideoftheglassfilm@gmail.com to get a digital copy.
Buy the film at www.theothersideoftheglass.com.

The film focuses on the male baby, his journey from the womb to the world and reveals healing and integrating the mother, father, and baby's wounded birth experience. The film is about the restoring of our families, society, and world through birthing loved, protected, and nurtured males (and females, of course). It's about empowering males to support the females to birth humanity safely, lovingly, and consciously.

Finally, a birth film for fathers.

What People Are Saying About the FIlm

Well, I finally had a chance to check out the trailer and .. wow! It's nice that they're acknowledging the father has more than just cursory rights (of course mom's rights are rarely acknowledged either) and it's great that they're bringing out the impact of the experience on the newborn, but I'm really impressed that they're not shying away from the political side.

They are rightly calling what happens in every American maternity unit, every day, by its rightful name - abuse. Abuse of the newborn, abuse of the parents and their rights, abuse of the supposedly sacrosanct ethical principal of patient autonomy and the medico-legal doctrine of informed consent, which has been long ago discarded in all but name. I love it!

In the immortal words of the "shrub", "bring it on!" This film needs to be shown and if I can help facilitate or promote it, let me know.

Father in Asheville, NC


OMG'ess, I just saw the trailer and am in tears. This is so needed. I watch over and over and over as fathers get swallowed in the fear of hospitals birth practice. I need a tool like this to help fathers see how very vital it is for them to protect their partner and baby. I am torn apart every time I see a father stand back and chew his knuckle while his wife is essentially assaulted or his baby is left to lie there screaming.
Please send me more info!!!!
Carrie Hankins
CD(DONA), CCCE, Aspiring Midwife
720-936-3609


Thanks for sharing this. It was very touching to me. I thought of my brother-in-law standing on the other side of the glass when my sister had to have a C-section with her first child because the doctor was missing his golf date. I'll never forget his pacing back and forth and my realizing that he was already a father, even though he hadn't been allowed to be with his son yet.

Margaret, Columbia, MO

In case you don't find me here

Soon, I'll be back to heavy-duty editing and it will be quiet here again. I keep thinking this blog is winding down, and then it revives. It is so important to me.

I wish I'd kept a blog of my journey with this film this past 10 months. It's been amazing.

I have a new blog address for the film, and will keep a journal of simple reporting of the journey for the rest of the film.


www.theothersideoftheglassthefilm.blogspot.com


I'll be heading east this week to meet with a group of men. I plan to post pictures and clips on the film blog.

I'll keep up here when I can -- when I learn something juicy, outrageous, or inspiring related to making birth safer for the birthing baby.

Review of the film

Most of us were born surrounded by people who had no clue about how aware and feeling we were. This trailer triggers a lot of emotions for people if they have not considered the baby's needs and were not considered as a baby. Most of us born in the US were not. The final film will include detailed and profound information about the science-based, cutting-edge therapies for healing birth trauma.

The full film will have the interviews of a wider spectrum of professionals and fathers, and will include a third birth, at home, where the caregivers do a necessary intervention, suctioning, while being conscious of the baby.

The final version will feature OBs, RNs, CNMs, LM, CPM, Doulas, childbirth educators, pre and perinatal psychologists and trauma healing therapists, physiologists, neurologists, speech therapists and lots and lots of fathers -- will hopefully be done in early 2009.

The final version will include the science needed to advocated for delayed cord clamping, and the science that shows when a baby needs to be suctioned and addresses other interventions. Experts in conscious parenting will teach how to be present with a sentient newborn in a conscious, gentle way -- especially when administering life-saving techniques.

The goal is to keep the baby in the mother's arms so that the baby gets all of his or her placental blood and to avoid unnecessary, violating, and abusive touch and interactions. When we do that, whether at home or hospital, with doctor or midwife, the birth is safe for the father. The "trick" for birthing men and women is how to make it happen in the hospital.

Birth Trauma Healing

Ani DeFranco Speaks About Her Homebirth

"Self-Evident" by Ani DeFranco

Patrick Houser at www.Fatherstobe.org

Colin speaks out about interventions at birth

Dolphins