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

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Midwives and Doulas -- the salt of the Earth and

Midwives and Doulas-
the salt of the Earth and guardians of our future.
by Colin Knauf

Next only to the power of the universe and motherhood, midwives, doulas and natural birth facilitators are our hope for a future. These dedicated souls offer wisdom of the ages, loving support and the natural order of things to enable healthy birth. They are our saving grace for a planet degenerating into chaos and catastrophe -our front lines fostering change for a better more peaceful tomorrow.

Every mechanical birth foisted upon us by our technology driven medical industry leads us closer to disaster. This industry and it's share holders put more value upon control and self perpetuating income than healthy birthing outcomes. Sadly they rule political policy and the planet.

Health, love and joy- being the natural byproduct of natural nurturing from conception through to birth and beyond - push us toward a life of health, tolerance, love, joy and compassion. Alternately every needless birthing intervention moves us away from nature's perfect path. Science has shown it predicates poor health, emotional dysfunction and violence which support the number one global industry: WAR MACHINES and number two profit centre: PHARMACEUTICALS!

As our second saviours, and I do not use that word lightly, Michel Odent and cohorts have shown through robust research and cross cultural study of birthing practices; a much better way is possible, easy, affordable and warranted. Science research has rediscovered what we have intuitively known all along. Science articulates what our innate genetic handbook of life is trying to tell us: pervasive modern methods of intervention and medication are unhealthy and impede the natural order of birth. Thinkers outside the box have shown scientifically and empirically: when all things natural are set in motion for birth to proceed - it does...most beautifully. Natural birth offers us health, well being and smiling babies not screaming, quivering, frightened souls predisposed to perils and problems that are totally unnecessary except for obscene profit and greed.

Baby and mother know best -by reading each others 'hormone chart', accurately timing and prompting each other to invoke the 'birthing ballet'. Later this dynamic duo interact to trigger mother's 'milk of human kindness'. The amazing elixir of life that fosters health, long term wellness and comfort. Perfectly sustaining babies who are so fortunate as to receive it.

'Labour' is a strange word to describe the natural course of events for this wonderfully sacred time. It is a word likely coined by modern medicine. Highly indicative of a limited perspective and descriptive of the horrendous effort involved in pushing a baby uphill uncomfortably confined in stirrups and balanced on a cold narrow operating table. Immobilized with wires and IVs dangling, tethered to beeping machines, in a too bright 'birthing theatre' permeated by foreign smells, anxiously distracted by too many poking and prodding people. Maybe 'labour' is an apt name for birthing in the disquieting and unfriendly environs of a conventional hospital. Compromising confusion, defensive hostility and feeling under siege is no recipe for a happy, healthy and imminent new life. Not the ideal setting for tranquil thoughts or attendant hopes and dreams for a long life of happiness with your emergent little one. What an unnatural way to begin a partnership that should sustain both, through all the ups and downs of life. Demeaning a woman by depriving her of her privacy, control and innate empowerment; and then setting her up for "failure to progress" is a sure path to post partum depression and all the attendant risk to mother and baby. It is a perfect catalyst to unhealthy dependency on the medical and pharmaceutical industry and other addictive behaviours which spawn our burgeoning western economy.

Leboyer, Odent, Prescott, Pearce, Bowlby, Montigu, Liedloff, the Harlows and a vast number of other leading and questioning thinkers have exhaustively researched and studied birthing and nurturing around the world. They have as much as proven: medical interventions predispose us to poor health, violent and addictive behaviours and many other malevolent life outcomes. They have illuminated our understanding of the important junctures in our primal period: preconception, conception, birth and postnatal development.

They have shown nature lays these milestones in perfect order and sacred balance. Resulting in healthy brain development invoking natural endocrinology and biochemical setup for a good life. Offering a life of joy, health, compassion, love, tolerance, production, fulfillment and best of all an innate understanding of the harmony available in the universe.

___________________________________________

Thank you for embracing nature,
Guiding us and pointing the way to harmony,
In a world so desperately in need of it.
You are making a difference – a huge one,
-- one happy birth and family at a time.
This bodes well for our future and world peace.

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