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

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Parking Lot Babies

Washington State Patrol troopers might want to start wearing scrubs when they work because more babies are being born on Seattle-area freeways -- at least in recent months.

The newest member to the club -- a baby girl -- entered the world Tuesday morning in the northbound lanes of Interstate 5 near Spokane Street, the Washington State Patrol reported.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/309154_baby27ww.html

Tim Scheufele gave his mother-in-law some bad directions Tuesday morning, causing her to miss the turn to Avista Adventist Hospital. But cut the guy some slack, he was busy delivering his son in the back seat.

Tim Scheufele Jr. was born just after 5 a.m. in the Louisville hospital parking lot, minutes after his grandmother overshot the hospital exit and ended up on McCaslin Boulevard.


In September, Dalton Hanson was welcomed into the world in the front seat of a Ford F-150 at the intersection of Foothills Parkway and Baseline Road. His mom, Kim Edwards, of Thornton, had been sent home from Boulder Community Hospital earlier in the day because she wasn't far enough into labor.
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2006/nov/01/baby-born-in-car-in-louisville-parking-lot/

And, this week in the news in Utah a mother gave birth in the parking lot before the midwife arrived.
http://www.parentdish.com/2007/05/09/mom-gives-birth-alone-in-birthing-center-parking-lot/

The baby is said to be fine, so why in NICU? Standard care. The baby could be in NICU for no medical reason, but to be "OBSERVED" because the BELIEF is that being born with only the mother and no caregiver the baby is damaged and distressed. Very likely the baby unwent extensive interventions to "check him/her out." My friend gave birth to her baby on the beach in Hawaii -- he was a footling breech so she could not be in the ocean as planned. Several days later DCFS took him and flew him to another island and he went through brutal treatments. She totally believes that they tried to kill to prove how wrong it was. She got him back weeks later but the ordeal dragged on and on and it opened the door for the father to take the baby -- after he "babynapped" the baby at about 11 months and took him out of the country. The mother didn't see her child for eleven years.

We had a couple of close calls at the Birth center here. One of my VBAC clients gave birth in the birth center -- had wanted to do homebirth, but house was a mess under construction. She had the urge to birth outside with trees -- we talked about it numerous times. Babies whisper their wishes to the mother. I told her to get clear within herself and with the baby about where. She arrived at the birth center and was waiting for the midwife and fought an urge to go into the trees to birth. She was just about to go and the midwife showed up -- she was thinking about my words to make sure of where you deeply want to birth. After the birth she regreted not giving birth outside. (That midwife might have supported it if she'd said somethng.) She continued to have that urge to birth in the trees. One baby was born enroute -- they lived an hour away, third baby, first non-hospital birth. Another friend's wife gave birth on the corner of College and Stadium in sight of the MU Tigers football stadium enroute back to the birth center. Doctor had sent her home, got half way there and turned around to come back.

I observed that women who birthed in the hospital previously and were used to the delays, drugs, interruptions, and pain did not have a sense of normal labor. Usually they think they have awhile to go because they are not in delibitating, excruciating pain. They don't realize that they are so far progressed as they are waiting for the hard part. The unpredictability of birth is the reason doctors and hospitals control it.

This will be interesting to watch. Rather than seeing how easy birth can be the media and medical focus will be on showing the danger. So many perspectives --- mine is that babies are participants in the process. They choose what happens (on a soul level before conception even) in order to live the life they intended and as "teachers" as they enter the mix of the family. It's the baby's birth -- the baby has a lot to do with what happens.

In the most recent story, AGAIN, it is person other than the parents going after the midwife. Grandma probably wasn't too keen on the idea in the first place. Unfortunately, she is of the majority and this one case will be used to further discredit midwifery and to encourage naysayers and legislators to further take away women's choices and responsibility for their birth. Besides that, Grandma is not honoring her grandchild's grand and independent entrance to their lives.

Here's another possible perspective. Similar story, different perspectives of the experience.

Last fall, Cindy Meza gave birth to her second daughter, Isabel, under a eucalyptus tree in the parking lot of her birth center. And while it wasn't exactly what she had planned, Meza, who caught her own baby, says the care and information she had received from her midwives over the course of both of her pregnancies allowed her to stay calm throughout her surprisingly quick labor and delivery.

Cindy tells her story like this, "My labor with Isabel was going very fast. My husband called the birth center and said, 'I think she's going to start pushing.' They said, 'Don't let her do that! Drive her here immediately.' We drove so fast, we beat the midwife there. I managed to get halfway across the parking lot when I felt the baby crowning. I made it to a tree about 5 feet from the center's front door."

Her husband was busy consoling their toddler, since they hadn't had time to get a babysitter, so Cindy was on her own. "But," she recounts, "because of the confidence instilled in me by my midwives, Sharon Milan and Janice Rodenberg, I knew exactly what to do and was never afraid. I knew how to support the head. I knew to stop pushing at the crowning. I remembered to wipe down her nose for mucus. Actually, she was born with the sac over her head, so, first, I had to pull it back off her face. I rubbed up her back, because that was something Sharon had told me would induce her to breathe. I trusted my body and my instincts, and delivered a perfect nine pound baby." Now, she reports, "I trust myself much more in all aspects of my life. I am proud to be a woman, and I owe so much to the two midwives who helped me achieve this."

While Cindy's story is an inspirational one, her tree-shaded birthing place was one few women would, or could, choose. Cindy herself had not actually chosen the birth center for its back-to-nature charm. In fact, she says, "As a technical writer and Web publisher at a software company, I work in a field of technological advances and, although I wanted my pregnancy and childbirth to be as natural as possible, I was not sure I wanted to give up medical technology. I decided to go to the Birth and Women's Health Center here in Tucson, Arizona, because the birth center is across the street from a hospital, and was a perfect compromise for my desire for natural childbirth and my fear that I might need medical assistance. It was the right choice. I had my first daughter, Astrid, there without medication and it was an incredible, empowering experience."

http://www.realsavvymoms.com/pregnancy/article.php?category2=7&article=42


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