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

Go to YouTube

Monday, February 05, 2007

Rights of Mothers and Babies

The Pregnant Patient's Bill of Rights
http://www.aimsusa.org/ppbr.htm

How To Legally Avoid Unwanted Immunizations Of All Kinds
Note: Personally, I don't know how I stand on immunizations. Because all of my four children are immunized part of me feels like other children can now get by without immunizations because mine are among the many who are immunized. Others' children are then unlikely to get sick as a result. My great-neice was one of a dozen infants in Chicago who got whooping cough in the mid-80's. She was hospitalized for months and nearly died many times. As a result of that, I was very reluctant to immunize my fourth child.


Baby's Bill Of Rights
Author Unknown

Talk To Me:
Sing, hum, babble, or even read the funnies to me! I don't know exactly what you're saying, but I need to hear you. And I do know what you mean, even if I may not know words. Like your voice tones mean, "I love you." Or when you yell, I hear, "You're a pest!" Unless you communicate with me, how can I learn? I learn from you.

Hold Me:
Everything is so big and new to me. I don't understand where I am. Or who I am. And I get scared. But when you hold me, I feel better. Your warmth warms me. Your breath and heartbeat make me feel I belong. Belong here. Belong to you.

Answer My Cry:
I don't cry to get you upset. Or to get you mad. I cry because I can't tell you how I feel any other way. Maybe I'm cold...or wet...or hungry...or scared and lonely. Answer my cries. You'll soon know what each one means. You won't spoil me. You'll help me to be a better baby... and to make you happier, too.

Love Me:
Like me. Love me just as I am. Don't expect me to do what I can't do. Like being toilet-trained. My muscles aren't ready yet. I know I'm messy. But I'm growing. Overlook my baby weaknesses. You're the most important person in my world. I can't make it without you. So get to know me. Have fun with me. And love me...just as I am.
http://www.cgcreations.org/poems/rights.html

Interesting .... as I was preparing this .... I realized, ahh, gee, don't we all still need these things no matter what age we are?
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3 comments:

Housefairy said...

Thank you for pregnant patient's rights! I just found out my sister is expecting, and, since she seems to be quite set on another hospital birth, at least I had this to forward to her. I told her to print it and keep it on her!

11:55 AM
Baby Keeper said...

Here's another good one from the Coalition of Maternity Services.
"Having a Baby? Ten Questions to Ask"

http://www.motherfriendly.org/resources/10Q/

Lots of good information on this site.

12:31 PM
Anonymous said...

This was sweet. :)

6:35 PM

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"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

  • Read Miracle Boy's story

    • Ani DeFranco Speaks About Her Homebirth

    Ani DiFranco Interview with Mindful Mama Magazine from Mindful Mama Magazine on Vimeo.

    "Self-Evident" by Ani DeFranco

    Patrick Houser at www.Fatherstobe.org

    Colin speaks out about interventions at birth

    Dolphins