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, March 05, 2007

Scientific Research

Yesterday I posted a mile of research PRIOR to 1990 that showed clearly the danger of epidural anesthesia for both mother and baby. Thousands and thousands of women and babies have been non-consenting and non-informed research subjects in that research and in the seventeen years since. Does the truth of epidural make it to the media, the mainstream, and do the doctors get their own peer-reviewed scientific research? Nope. But, here is an article from yahoo -- big news it is. THREE subjects warrant international headlines. God help us.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a report published this week, Australian doctors describe three individuals who suffered epileptic seizures induced by toothbrushing.

Imaging studies revealed small lesions in a region of the brain close to the hand and speech motor areas in all three individuals.

"The rhythmic act of brushing teeth may excite an already overly excitable area of the brain," lead author Dr. Wendyl D'Souza, from the University of Melbourne in Australia, said in a statement.

"This is similar to photosensitive epilepsy, which involves seizures triggered by flashing lights and moving patterns."

The seizures resolved with medications in one patient, surgery in another, and were still apparent in the third despite medical therapy, the researchers report.

SOURCE: Neurology March 6, 2007.

A study with n=3 makes it to Neurology!?!? Can we pleeeeeeeease get ONE study with brain scans of THREE babies born induced and with epidural anesthesia and THREE babies born at home? I hypothesis that all three of the induced baby's brain will show bleeds and the homebirth baby's brains will not.

Lord o' mercy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Revealing the truth about induction and epidural anesthesia might "hurt" doctors and hospitals, so it's not going to happen.

Thanks for the heads-up about toothbrushing. I choose to continue brushing my teeth, but at least now it's an informed choice.

Baby Keeper said...

yeah, yeah, you're very welcome. just don't let your children get a hold of this research.

oh, and, I wonder ... what causes an "already overly excitable area of the brain"? were these three people induced?

hmmm.

Molly Bloom said...

I don't really understand how you linked this article to complications in babies born with an epidural. I don't think people would hide facts about the damages of an epidural if the knew any. If people chose to hide health facts for money, we couldn't have made the number of medical advances that we have in the last century.

Baby Keeper said...

I was being facetious -- sort of.

People -- medical caregivers and consumers -- do hide the facts about epidural all of the time. That's the whole point of my months of writing, sometimes ranting. Violet, a poster on homebirthdebate asks repeatedly for months for the blogger to tell what she discloses to her patients about the dangers. Doesn't matter -- consumers are so seduced into believing birth is too painful and that they have a "right" to use narcotics during labor they don't hear the details.
I have asked the blogger for over a year for ONE itty bitty of research to show us that bupivicaine and fentanyl (or ether, or Demerol, or scopalamine, or any of the current narcotics) were EVER shown to be safe for the birthing baby BEFORE using. AND, where is the research proving that induction for convenience and not for a medical need is safe and without long term consequences. There isn't any.

SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO the research clearly showed serious complications to the mother and baby. It is ignorant -- and medically, ethically, and socially irresponsible as a medical and civilized society to continue to promote epidural as safe WHILE doing BS research like dividing 120 laboring babies into five groups and giving them different combinations of bupivicaine and fentanyl to get the correct dosage to counter the effects of buivicaine. Neither drug shown to be safe AND/BUT shown to cause serious complications.

Just because society goes along with the denial of the labor and birth experience as having anything to do with health and wellness for the rest of one's life, doesn't make it so for the baby's who's physiology was affected. Twenty years after introducing epidural anesthesia big time, where's the EVIDENCE to say that these baby's were unaffected -- because they "seemed fine" later. Narcotics use in birth doesn't led to the need to use narcotics for ADD and doesn't lead to the increasing high rates of meth, fentanyl, heroine, crack, and cocaine use. Or epilepsy? Where's the proof?

Advancement in science is always made at the expense of a few human lives for the enrichment of those making money. Viagra was a big money maker, but a lot of men paid the price with death, heart attacks, and blindness. Viox, Celibrex, etc., etc., etc.

"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