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

Monday, December 04, 2006

She Ain't Afraid of No Doctor

Safe Baby Partners:

Not long after unsuccessfully baiting Henci Goer to a public debate, Dr. Amy posted a post dissecting Henci's article in Mothering Magazine. Dr. Amy's need to bash anyone who supports "natural", "normal", or "home" birth is a palpable thirst, an almost vampirish need for blood as she "goes for the throat" of those who dare to say that home is a safe place to birth, especially those who had one.

God forbid if they share their personal experience that supports what she wrote in May: "given the low rate of interventions, the risk to the mother is probably lower. All these factors need to be blalanced (sic) against the increased neonatal mortality. The increased risk is small, but it is real, and it is important to be aware of it."

Meanwhile, seven months later, no one has been able to pull from the doctor what it is that is so abhorent to her about the 1% of American women who give birth at home, the 5% who birth without drugs, and the probably 1/3 of birthing women who want to go to the hospital for safety and not use drugs, but end up doing so or even having surgical birth. Nor, has Dr. Amy come up with any research to show that any drugs or interventions have ever been shown to be safe for the birthing baby. For every thing else SCIENTIFIC PROOF is the measurement. In this case, the only "scientific" measurement of "good outcome" is baby born alive, and "seems ok", sometimes regardless of obvious trauma (cuts, marks, bruises, chignon head). The process and experience of the baby due to interventions to achieve the live birth is minimized at best, and usually ignored. Presumably, but not scientifically, this is because babies don't remember labor and birth. Gosh, everyone knows they just turn into brainless blobs during that inherently dangerous, life threatening, and otherwise insignificantly short period of time (labor and birth.) Alive baby -- that's what it's about for Dr. Amy. End of story. That's her story, and oh man, is she stickin' to it.

Occasionally, one of these minority of women -- one of those empowered, natural, homebirther, or VBAC'er (a wild, breastfeedin' mama) comes along to go a few rounds with Dr. Amy. (She "seems" to keep them around to chew on while banning those of us who provide the scientific foundation for showing what obstetric medicine does is damaging to the human being albeit a "live birth.")

WHEW!! And, it's awesome to see a woman who knows her body and takes responsibility for her body and birth express herself! It does remind me of why this society is so determined to control women and their bodies during birth with drugs. Daaaang, a woman who gives birth on her own terms, under the influence of her own hormones -- not narcotics and other drugs -- now, that one, she is a power to be reckoned with. She ain't afraid of no doctor.

No wonder THEY -- women even -- push drugs on women in labor. "Gotta keep women numb and quiet, lest we have to change -- and stop harming women and babies in the name of medicine."

Here's one such a posting for December 3, 2006. You go, girl -- Someone, again.

From Someone, again:
Why do you need to know, for me to prove that they exist or so you can go cyberstalk them, scrutinize them, and find something wrong with them so you can claim they don't count?

Dr. Amy:
"Just like most Americans, natural childbirth/homebirth advocates have very poor knowledge about the history of childbirth before modern obstetrics. They tend to think that the way things are now is the way that they have always been."

Someone, Again:
"Really? I don't know anyone who thinks that way, and I certainly don't. Who are these natural childbirth/homebirth advocates, specifically, who think that and have no knowledge of childbirth before modern obstetrics? You don't even know when obstetrics came about and refuse to even acknowledge that medical intervention occurred even in the dark ages.

Dr. Amy:
"The low neonatal and maternal mortality rates in this country are a direct result of modern obstetrics."

Someone, again:
"Prove it. Prove that it is because of obstetrics and not to do with the hundreds of other changes that have occured in our country and society over the years.

Dr. Amy:
"In fact, virtually everything that midwives do is a direct result of modern obstetrics"

Someone, again:
"Oh? Having women birth in water, giving herbs, keeping the children warm after birth, all of that came from modern obstetrics? Wowz!"

Dr. Amy:
"The very people who claim to be better educated and more knowledgeable about childbirth apparently don't know even the most basic facts about childbirth."

Someone, Again:
"Like you, for example!You keep making all of these claims about what natural childbirth advocates claim, but I know very few who actually preach what you are accusing them of preaching. Can you show me some proof of your claims about them as a group?

Dr. Amy:
"Natural childbirth advocates don't really think straight about risk"

Someone, again:
"Right, we don't think straight about risks because we think the chances of us having complications from unnecessary medical interventions are higher than the chances of us having serious complications from allowing labor to progress naturally at home. I think I'm much more likely to have a C-section and them hemorrhage from it in the hospital than I am to bleed to death at home. I must not be thinking straight."

Dr. Amy:
"Birth is so safe, so perfectly "designed" and complications are so rare in their fantasy world."

Someone, again:
"And in yours, birth is never safe; nature had no clue what she was doing; and complications occur in nearly every situation". 12.04.06 - 2:45 am #

2 comments:

Lee said...

I've given up on Duh Amy. As I said on my LJ, she's a fraud. Nothing scientific at all about someone who chooses her facts according to the point she is trying to make. REAL scientists (as I know them - I'm married to one!) take as many facts as they can that are valid, analyse them, and then find a theory of best fit, which they are prepared to toss the moment a better theory comes along.

Sometimes no theory explains a situation, so you just have random facts that don't seem to fit at all. And you can't even be sure whether a piece of information is a fact or not! (geez - can you tell I'm not a scientist - but I'm sure you get what I'm trying to say!)

Point is, Duh Amy has made up her mind, and no fact or stat will change it. So she's a fossil, not a scientist. Belongs in the rocks, with the other dinosaurs.

Unknown said...

I agree that Amy is a fraud and is not nearly as scientific as she believes herselves to be. She picks and choses which facts, studies, and statistics to acknowledge and respect. You are absolutely right that she should be considering all sides of the argument and then coming to a conclusion that fits everywhere, rather than clinging to one end of the spectrum kicking and spitting at the other. She has made up her mind, and she had her mind made up long before she began researching as is obvious from the amount of bias she shows when dealing with facts.

"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