The Other Side of the Glass: Fathers-to-Be in Austin, Texas

Friday, October 24, 2008

Fathers-to-Be in Austin, Texas

FATHERS-TO-BE

presents

Advanced Birth Professional Workshop

"Supporting Fathers Prenatally and Through Childbirth"

How birthcare professionals welcome fathers is significant to the whole family system.

Learn, in a dynamic study format, how to work more effectively with fathers in the antenatal and birth environment.

Outcomes:

· Increased confidence in working with men/fathers.

· Increased skills for welcoming fathers into the pregnancy and birth process.

· Understanding ways to support a man's "low adrenaline" presence at birth itself.

· Learn how to help fathers manage their expectations in a way that contributes most effectively to the families needs.

· Experience articulating 'gender issues' for yourself as well as parents and increase your ability to communicate.

Saturday November 15

1-4:30 PM

Ronald McDonald House

1315 Barbara Jordan Blvd, Austin, TX 78723

$75

Presented by Patrick Houser. Patrick has spent many years working in the field of pregnancy, birth and early parenthood. Now a grandfather, Patrick pioneered conscious birthing with his son's waterbirth in 1980, the first in the US. In 2006 he co-founded of Fathers-To-Be UK and works with expectant and new dads, birthcare professionals and educators. He is also the author of the new book, Fathers-To-Be Handbook.

A Fathers-To-Be Handbook will be included for all participants.

Reserve your place at www.centexbirthnetwork.org

512-691-9546 (3 DONA CEU, pending)

1 comment:

Jan said...: We are so glad to be hosting your meeting at the Ronald McDonald House. Thank you for the great work you are doing for children and families!

Jan Gunter
Ronald McDonald House Communications; October 29, 2008 at 9:52 AM

Buy It!

Part One: The Other Side of the Glass: a Birth Film for and About Men officially released in digital download format on June 2, 2013. Go to www.TheOtherSideoftheGlass.com to purchase a digital download.

Men have been marginalized in birth for a long time. The old joke is that a man was sent off to boil water to keep him busy. I believe they were making the environment safe. Birth moved to hospitals and for forty years women were separated from their partners who was left to wait in smoke filled waiting room. Finally, he would see his baby from "the other side of the glass." Now a man can go in the birthing room and even get to hold his partner's hand during surgery. But they are still marginalized and powerless, according to the fathers I interviewed around the country.

Historically, birth has been defined by the medical establishment. The midwifery and natural birth movement now advocate for need "to educate and prepare men to protect their wife and baby" in medical environment. Seems logical ... if we process with the same illogic that got us here.

Through the voices of men - and doctors and midwives - men share heart-touching stories about how this is not workin' out. A man is also very likely to be disempowered and prevented from connecting with their newborn baby in the first minutes of life.

Now is the time for men to take back birth.

The film is about restoring our families, society, and world through birthing wanted, 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.

Donors, check your emails or email me at theothersideoftheglassfilm@gmail.com for info to download. Release on DVD is not planned at this date.

FREE online! watch Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 10 at www.vimeo.com/75767434

Resources - Healing Birth Trauma

"The Other Side of the Glass" has the potential to open up feelings that have been denied and ignored for a very long time. How to heal the trauma of birth at any age will be addressed in the film. Meanwhile, these are pioneers in the field.

Raymond Castellino and Mary Jackson - www.BEBA.org

David Chamberlain, Ph.D. - www.BEPE.info

Judith Cohen - www.judithleecohen.com

Myrna Martin - www.MyrnaMartin.net

Karen Melton - www.HealYourEarlyImprints.com

Wendy McCord, Ph.D. - www.WendyMcCord.com

Wendy McCarty, Ph.D. - www.WondrousBeginnings.com

And, many, many more all over the world at www.BirthPsychology.com

Sing It!

This is such important work. We are in the midst of a terrible trend of over intervention into birth, resulting in trauma and distress. Your films will show the core of the unexpressed pain for parents and for the baby.

Phyllis Klaus, CSW, MFCC
Co-author, "Your Amazing Newborn

Janel, I watch a lot of birth videos (my wife is a midwife and it seems to be some sort of professional obligation). Recently I have been horrified by what I see. Watching the previews you've had up recently has changed the way I understand what I am seeing. This is especially true around the parts dealing with, "What would it take to make an adult scream like that?" You have changed the way I think about, view, and evaluate births that I see and hear about. My feelings about the birth of my own children has changed. Really, my world has changed.
- Geoff.

What people are saying

Wow, thank you for posting that. It brought a few tears to my eyes! The part where the doctor is "prying" the newborn out of the mother's arms... and she is so helpless, her legs open, just having given birth, naked... so disempowered in that moment with her own child that she worked so hard to grow and deliver!!

And I never realized how disempowered the fathers must feel too... very eye-opening in that regard. Pretty terrifying actually, and I'm glad I'm planning a home birth.

Although I will certainly make sure the midwife knows I want the baby with me, undisturbed, for quite a while, before she even thinks about doing anything like suctioning, weighing, etc...

--poster on Tribe

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

www.mothersbirthright.com

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

Delivery Room Football

by Emmet Miller, M.D.

“Hold on a minute!” I said. “I want her to go to her mother.” I looked over at Sandy’s exhausted, filmy eyes and the look of panic on her face.

“No, we’re sorry,” they replied firmly. “Hospital policy.” Having proclaimed this, they strode purposely forward toward the door just to my left.

Quickly I stepped in front of them, blocking their way. “Hospital policy or not, I’m her father and she’s staying here!”

Suddenly it seemed time began to slow. Looking back, it seems almost like some sort of bizarre operating-room football game. The doctor, with my child tucked under his right arm like a halfback, decided he would simply ignore this irrational father, take a step to his right and scoot on past my left elbow and through the swinging door. I don’t know what he expected I would do, but I certainly know his eyes looked surprised when I made my move.

Continue to read the rest of Delivery Room Football

Preach It!

Watch It! (The Trailer)

Friday, October 24, 2008

Fathers-to-Be in Austin, Texas

1 comment:

Buy It!

"Doctor's Voices" - Stuart Fischbein, MD - Part 1

Doctor's Voices - Michael Odent, MD

Human Rights Violations

Resources - Healing Birth Trauma