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, August 30, 2008

My Letter to Dr. Phil

A few weeks ago I wrote to Dr. Phil when I hear that he wanted to do a program about birth. Then I heard that a second show request had gone out; one that appears to be biased towards showing that homebirth is dangerous. So, I cranked out another one ....

Dear Dr. Phil:

I implore you to see the opportunity you have to make a profound difference in our society. Please consider your moral obligation to have the same question posed for hospital birth and to take this issue to a level very few have the courage to do.

Will you share how the US has higher infant and maternal mortality rates than any other industrialized nation where they have a NATIONAL STANDARD OF CARE that includes homebirths and midwives? The US has no standard of care and physicians have no one overseeing what they do, drugs they use that were never shown safe for the birthing baby. Will you discuss the rights of a woman to choose where and with whom she gives birth? Will you discuss how relinquishing responsibility for birth to doctors and hospitals leads us to accept that US birth is safer?

Will you discuss the decades long research showing the epidural is dangerous to baby and mother? And, that the drugs used are dangerous to anyone -- fentanyl is classified as a potential chemical weapon. Will you discuss how NONE of the drugs EVER used in obstetric care were ever tested and researched to prove safety before using on laboring and birthing women and BABIES. Will you consider that 90% of our population was born 'Under the influence" of drugs and born with lack of regard for the vulnerability of the baby --- cord clamping requires the rough toweling of baby to stimulate it to breathe when nature has provided for the transition.

Will you bring on brain experts and pre and perinataly psychologists to discuss the impact of any birth on the baby? David Chamberlain, (www.bepe.info and www.birthpsychology.com), PhD. Marti Glenn, PhD (Santa Barbara Graduate Institute Pre and Perinatal Psychology Program), William Emerson, PhD (www.emersonbirthrx.com), Wendy McCarty, RN, PhD (www.wondrousbeginnings.com), Thomas Verny, MD (www.trvernymd.com), Ray Castellino, DC (www.beba.org). I suggest you include Allan Schore, an expert in early brain development, Peter Nathanielsz, PhD, MD (OB) a researcher in the prenatal and birth period and author of three books on the subject, and Bruce Lipton, PhD., a cellular biologist (www.brucelipton.com).

I hope you will do a whole series of shows ... while the epidural and cesarean section rate soar, so does the "failing" school issue and rates of addictions and other issues. Somehow, someone has to make the connection -- the connection between the most monumental day of life, the most dangerous, most joyful, and most challenging for the human being.

The experience of leaving the womb and coming into this life is the most profound experience of life. It is currently controlled by medical systems and unnecessary, damaging, painful, intrusive, boundary violating practices are made routine for every baby. Many people are choosing homebirth in order to avoid these, in order to protect their baby.

The question should really be how can we bridge the two worlds, like in countries where more babies and women simply survive, and where they appear to go on to be physically and emotionally healthier and are smarter, by educational standards, than our children? One study compared normal Americans to incarcerated citizens in Europe and normal Americans score worse. The biggest difference between the US and these other successful countries is the way we bring our babies into the world.

This is so much more than the issue it is being made out to be -- someone needs to address it differently, holistically, intelligently, looking at the entire picture. Why not you, Dr. Phil?

Respectfully,

L. Janel Martin Miranda, MA
CranioSacral Based Attachment TherapistBirth Videographer/Filmmaker
www.bepe.info
www.SafeBabyResolution.com
www.hospitalbirthdebate.blogspot.com

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