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

Thursday, January 18, 2007

What's mother to do?

When looking at the discussion about where birth is safest for the baby -- home or hospital --- the bottom line a pregnant mom needs to do her own research (BEFORE she becomes pregnant, if possible) is:
  • Look at all of the literature from around the world about where she is definitively known to be significantly safer. Research shows mother and baby are as safe, if not safest when birthing with trained midwives. The negligible difference between homebirth and hospital safety for babies could be easily remedied.
  • Look at the summations of others regarding the Johnson and Daviss study (those without vested financial interests)
  • Look at other studies particularly those done in Sweden, UK, and Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand where infant and maternal death rates are the lowest in the world, and in states in the US where non-nurse midwifery is legal and socially acceptable -- Washington, Oregon, Florida, California, Arizona, and Texas.
  • Talk to women who have given birth at home AND consider the reasons that things have gone wrong in both home and hospital birth.
So, that’s great if you live in California, Texas, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and maybe New York. But what if a woman does want to give birth at home and lives in states like Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Virginia, and most of the other states where there non-medical midwifery is not legal or available? She DOESN'T HAVE THE OPTION OF HAVING A MIDWIFE AS A CAREGIVER OR TO CHOSE TO BIRTH AT HOME!!

A lot of issues arise around my work in prenatal and birth trauma healing – people feel hopeless without an awareness of how to mediate the experience. The same sort of risk exists for heralding the truth about midwifery care for women in states where it is not an option --- women feel helpless and powerless. A woman can get involved in midwifery support groups and in taking the question of safety of birth to her local politicians.

There is one very good reason for every woman, every community, and every state to begin to look at the research-based quality of midwifery care for childbirth. Home Land Security needs to address the need and provide for the need of pregnant and laboring, birthing women in the event of a catastrophic event of any cause. Hospitals could be destroyed, not fully functioning, quarantined, or overwhelmed with trauma patients. The lack of a plan for caring for it's pregnant and birthing women is an example of a hospital, community, and state's monumental lack of regard for the safety of birthing women and babies.

When the historical data shows that the countries that developed a non-medical, but collaborative midwifery, woman-focused model of maternity care and a STANDARD of care for that country, what is going on here in the US? How are some states perfectly legal where a large number of women give birth at home – California and Washington, while in others is considered “practicing medicine without a license.” Why is a birth center model illegal in IL, while it flourishes in other states?? Why may only Certified Nurse Midwives (CNM) practice under a doctor in IL while it is illegal for Direct Entry (DE) or Certified Professional Midwifery (CPM) professionals to practice? Why does a woman in those states have to birth her baby like women in pre-seventies had to secure an abortion? WHY does a woman have “the right to her body” so she can chose to abort a fetus; however, she has to give up her rights to her body and her baby’s care when she chooses to keep the pregnancy and give birth?

Having the right to her body in birth and making choices about her baby’s birth is a woman’s issue. It’s as big as getting The Vote.

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