An overdue update

I received an inquiry today about where the film is -- someone who recently donated on 2/10/09:

Hi,

I paid for my "donation" copy of the other side of the glass add on to the trailer. When will I receive my copy? Please contact me promptly! Paypal completed on 2/10/09 and I haven't heard a word. Wonder if I can reverse it?

I am glad I got that this week and not last week.

I am in the midst of a last minute scramble to finish up what I can here in Phoenix as I am leaving Friday for a grueling 3 day trip (1200 miles and 3-4 interviews) to finish up filming. I will arrive in northern CA to work with my editing teacher on Monday after a long trip and interviews.

This note was a good reason to stop and take time to update visitors and followers of the film about my progress. It's been on my "to-do" list.

I am experiencing a computer challenge as I prepare to meet with my editing teacher in what was to be "polishing" of Part One. It will not be as ready as I planned. However, as is the nature of this amazing film that has a life of it's own, amazing things have emerged, much like it did in September in my trip to the east coast.

But the good news is plentiful: Part one finally has a name, His Moment ... of Awe. I recently completed the DVD label and cover design knowing it will be adjusted as the film itself completes. I also connected with the person who is, as we speak, doing original music for this part. A major birth photographer is lending her photos. Everything takes a lot of time. Someone in Italy emailed me about translating the trailer. I spent three days on transcribing it in detail -- finally, crossing that off the list. I have someone to do Portuguese and Spanish and looking for French. All of these people are donating their piece to this part one. It is such a blessing. I intend for sales of Part One to fund paying them to finish their part in the completion of the film (two other parts).

For those of you who are waiting so patiently, some of you since you donated in September and October, I wish to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your patience and support. I have tried to keep you updated via email but have not done such a good job here.

Last week I sort of hit a wall ... I was (and am) so tired as I continue to do this as a one-woman team. Actually, as I learned to do in Trance Dance (check it out!) I danced along the proverbial "brick wall" examining and experiencing it. I have been aware since September's visit in SC with unassisted couples, that I am doing this film as if I were birthing my "baby" unassisted. It is also, above all else, a film to honor my grandson, Andrew; my daughter, Erin; my son-in-law, Osama, and my older grandson, Adam. They are the hospital birth family. I am the Grandma. My younger daughter, with me on this production, was the videographer.

I have much support -- emotional, spiritual, and physical -- from around the world, but only these donations are the financial support. I had an internal tantrum, threatening to just quit, knowing that I can't, knowing I was just being like my three-year old grandson, Andrew, where I am living in Phoenix. I am just showing my frustration, independence, exhaustion, and determination. I am blessed and grateful for the opportunity to do this film as I am in awe of the message that has emerged and how important it is.

But seriously, honestly, I have been frustrated with the lack of financial resources and the obstacles. And, while 99% of the time I am in awe of my accomplishment and the spiritual journey in this process, I am always in need of financial assistance. Aren't we all? The trailer was to be fundraiser trailer; to procure big funding, to hire experts and professionals, but I found that I was to do the work. Like an UC birther. So, since it's my baby, I am not sure how to ask for support for this film, except through offering a copy of the completed Part one when it is done. Like a homebirth/UC mother I know it is my baby and I need support, education, resources, and those who are more qualified than me to help. Me, personally, I don't want to borrow and owe people, and I want the energy of the film and funding to be reciprocal. Hence, the donation now, in exchange for the "First Edition, Fundraiser Edition" that I fantasize becomes a "collector item."

I have big expenses coming up -- paying my editing colleague for assistance with the editing ($500), travel to DC in March ($500) and professional burning of the final product in late March or early April ($500). This is what sent me into a "little tizzy tantrum" with God, the universe, Whoever. I don't know where the money will come from and this is nothing new, but I am at the end of the birth, in transition, where the great amount of energy is needed to birth this amazing baby. I am tired. And, the journey makes me so grateful. I bought myself a new $6 bra and a pair of $20 pants last week -- my first in two years. Everything goes to my daughter and to the film.

I have been blessed with "in-kind" donations to make this film happen. One year, rent-free, in a wonderful duplex in MO, "home" while I zig zagged across the country for six months, and while I spent six months working 50 hours a week, learning the editing software and editing programs for community access television station. My ten-year old grandson sat with me last night watching me transcribe video (I let him listen to Sarah Buckley in reverse and had him convinced that I was translating from a foreign language!) and he asked, "Granny, who pays you your pay check?" I answered, "I don't get a pay check.... but people are donating money so they can get a copy of the film, and later, a lot of people will be buying the film."

Beyond the financial situation and the yearning to get back to working with babies and families, is the passion to just get this information out to the public -- the wonder at how amazing the information is, how it can contribute to transforming birth in our society and to transforming humanity. Being in my grandson's presence (and his brother's, Andrew, in the film) I am blessed.

Baby Andrew is an amazing soul who came to give us this information. Sometimes he and I just gaze into each other's eyes and I melt into the universe in a moment of bliss. I had one of the moments in the car taking him to his other grandma's house. We were making eye contact in the rear view mirror. The music on the radio, which ironically, I can't even recall, heightened "the moment of awe" (hint, hint) with him and I was transported in a moment of bliss. I cried. The film is for Andrew ... and all of our babies.

Sooooo, a musical fundraiser planned in MO isn't happening this month. Rather than be in a tizzy, last week I started to develop a format to do a "Fundraising Party" based on my producer-friend's "how to" book, but I just don't have time to add that job to my current work load -- of finishing (birthing) Part One. I am still working totally alone. If someone would like to take on that role, to set up a format, contact people, network on Facebook, I could help and hand it over. I wanted to ask people to have a little party in their community and show the trailer and take donations for a first edition, fundraiser edition of Part One.

Part One is really designed for doulas, childbirth educators, midwives, and women to give to their men, and other than child support and "in-kind donations, is my only resource for funding my living expenses while I complete the rest of the film. This fundraiser edition will include the Intro (expanded trailer) and Part One: His Moment ... of Awe. Part Two is not yet named but looks at men's experience of transformation when they have experienced a powerful woman who trusts and knows her body works ... and births powerfully. Part Three will get into the world of pre and perinatal psychology, the wounding of men since their own birth, the healing of birth experiences, and impact of empowered birth on humanity.

So, taking this time and opportunity to update folks, I want to ask for your financial support by donating at least $15 in exchange for a first edition fundraiser edition copy of Part One, and to consider showing the trailer at a house party and collecting other donations. If someone one wants to create and manage fundraising, please let me know.

Also on my wish list is an RV as I plan to travel to do extensive interviews of the OB's in Part One, amazing people doing science-based, mother-baby focused obstetrics for the next project.

So, here's my response to the note:

Dear ______,

The film is in production, as is indicated in the blog.

I am doing this film as a one-woman team. I am still filming .. completing filming for Part One this weekend as I travel from Phoenix to San Diego to Los Angeles, and then to Nevada City, CA with the plans to finish Part one, then travel to Washington DC in a car with 200,800 miles on it to screen it to a group, to film a birth for part one, and to then wrap it up and get it professionally burned. I travel in prayer, I tell you. I am doing every single bit of it -- including thank you's for donations, which I had not yet gotten done for you. THANK YOU.

People who donated in October and beyond are also still waiting, and I am so appreciative of their interest, support, and patience. I don't think people realize how precious and important that $15 is and how far it goes and what it means to me and the film. I am often waiting, as I was this week, for child support to come in to do this next leg of the trip. I do not have credit cards and this film, unlike many, will be done without "debt". This months allocation (child support) will not get me to DC, and I have no idea at this moment how I will pay for the trip to DC. I am leaving Phoenix where I have been living with my daughter and family (grandson!) having given up my home a year ago -- to do this film. It is a place where I can work on very tedious aspects of the film. I have been traveling off and on for over a year now .... with a 15 year old, a dog and a cat ..

This film is an act and labor of love -- baby Andrew is my grandson and Erin is my daughter. The donations are the only funding I have other than child support and acts of kindness -- lodging, meals, etc. I feel I am in late stage and transitional labor. I hope you can appreciate the process and bear with me ... I am laboring heavily now and birthing this baby very soon. Like every birth, this film has it's own timing and process. Like a woman in labor, all I can do it go with the present contraction.

I appreciate your support more than words can say.

L. Janel Martin Miranda, M.A.BabyKeeper Baby Doula/CranioSacral based Birth Trauma and Attachment Therapist/Birth Videographer
573-424-0997
www.theothersideoftheglassthefilm.blogspot.com

High Tech Procedures during BABY's labor and birth

Back to basics for safer childbirth

Too many doctors and hospitals are overusing high-tech procedures

In fact, the current style of maternity care is so procedure-intensive that 6 of the 15 most common hospital procedures used in the entire U.S. are related to childbirth. Although most childbearing women in this country are healthy and at low risk for childbirth complications, national surveys reveal that essentially all women who give birth in U.S. hospitals have high rates of use of complex interventions, with risks of adverse effects.

http://www.consumerreports.org/health/medical-conditions-treatments/pregnancy-childbirth/maternity-care/overview/maternity-care.htm


As usual, my question is .... what about the baby? WHAT about the BABY?!? When is the media going to ask about the impact to the BABY when speaking of "adverse effects?" We call it BIRTH TRAUMA. The baby's brain is WORKING, interpreting the environment and experience and IMPRINTING the brain, remembering it all.

I'm baaaaack ... Online

And, I wanted to let you know why the blogs were down for awhile.

I had to take my blogs down because I had an attacker of my work. That was ok, because when people disagree with me, I embrace it as an opportunity to learn. I try to find common ground, find a common goal. But it was not ok to troll my blogs for addresses of others to whom to send very disparaging information.

This person was charging me with "promoting the abuse of newborns" and sent the information far and wide, including to state officials in Missouri.

Yeah, me. Me, accused of "promoting the abuse of newborns." Me, who annoys people with my mantra "What about the baby?" every time they forget to mention the baby's experience when talking about how traumatic birth was for the mother. People AVOID me because they don't want to hear it me going on and on and on and on .. and on ... about the baby, the film, the interviews that tell the story of how it is that babies are harmed by standard medical practices.

My family, friends, and colleagues all TOLERATE me. Since we are on the road again, my poor fifteen year old never gets away from it -- her Christmas gift iPod with EAR PHONES (is that what they are called these days) was her reward and salvation. (She also gets to meet a lot of cool people, some well-known in my field and some actors while were in Topanga - as friends of friends, I can't reveal who, and she gets to see the country, play on the beach, hike the mountains, and eat great food.) But, yeah, ME?!, he accuses me, turns me in to officials all over the country? ME, who is making a film to bring attention to the abuse of the newborn, in a way that addresses all the aspects of society and medicine that leads to the abuse of newborns, I am accused of "promoting the abuse of newborns." Say whaaaaaaaat?.... ME too, I was also "shocked and surprised," like that cartoon character whose eyes pop out and head shakes so hard - in disbelief- that his cheeks and mouth shake making that funny sound. Remember him?

It was so far off, so left-field, so untrue I was able to see through it and glean some gold for myself and the film.

This is the rather kind note (relative to the info he wrote to officials about me, on the Youtube comments:

Janel, There is a huge flaw in your trailer.

You failed to mention that all 50 states MANDATE reporting of child abuse when child abuse is so much as SUSPECTED. You failed to mention to your target audience - fathers - that THEY can report. Failure to report mass child abuse helps to "normalize" mass child abuse, as in the transcript/excerpt below from your trailer for The Other Side of the Glass....

Haven't most of us adults at least learned to "Use 'I' Statements" when expressing ourselves? He goes on to list the narrative of folks in my film (whom he also attempted to contact and then to trash in mass mailings.

I agree with him: the actions of some caregivers, midwives and nurses, and doctors, are violent. It is abuse. So here's where we part company: This person demands that I, and you, everyone HOTLINE the medical caregivers and charge them with child abuse. Every one of us should hotline THEM. "Them" being the doctors, nurses, and midwives.

When I disagreed and refused to hotline the staff who abused the hospital born baby (in order to be honored with his interview), the attack on me was on. Unfortunately, he is too unstable and too unreasonable and, has a history of doing this to everyone in my professional field for years. He has been sued for slander and lost and the award has been collected. I spoke with the attorney who sued him on his own behalf.

I've been wanting to write more about the issue he raises because it is so important to get the message out there ... but I am so friggin' busy BECAUSE I am still a ONE-WOMAN production team. Ironically, I wanted to interview this person because of the "piece" of the puzzle he has that is so important, and is a topic in my film. The information he has amassed is important and I will post it soon when I have time to wade through the weeds and muck of his emails to pick the flowers.

Ironically, this fellow can't "sing with the choir", but instead blasts the people in the choir, who would be on his team -- from behind. Instead of seeing us as all working towards the same goal - stopping the abuse of laboring, birthing, and newborn babies - the dude is outraged at the rest of the choir. I can not "get a word in edgewise" as my mama says, to discuss the problem of a system that will NOT support hotlining caregivers for child abuse, even though I see it as abuse. He makes it a war, the choir become enemy troops, and if one is not willing to go into battle like a Black Ops, he blasts his own people, the ones who get what he says. With my son in both wars waged by this country for premptive reasons, and this guy at my back, I really don't like that term, "friendly fire." It still wounds and kills.

I agree with his belief that they abuse babies, but I do believe it is unknowingly most often. The behavior, verbalizations, and attitude of the nurse in the trailer are shocking to everyone; however, consider this: she KNEW she was being videotaped. !?!?!? But, still whether they are aware or not, whether it is deliberate or not, I agree that the experience of the baby is one of being abused and violated.

BUT, I part ways with this person on the issue of hotlining nurses and doctors and midwives for several reasons:

1) because that system is profoundly broken, and I would go so far as to say it is a PRODUCT or RECIPIENT of the poor, intrusive, violating maternal health care system. The child protective system and myriad of services and professionals in that field are just some of the many on the "food chain" I call it, of socially sanctioned beneficiaries of violent birth.

We have in mass, condoned and allowed this. I agree with him on that. WHY and how to get out of it IS the last part of my film. My film has four parts: the intro (trailer) and the upcoming piece, "The Moment ... of Awe" for fathers, followed by a very powerful look at the transformation of men by experiencing his partner's empowered birth, and then finally, the healing and transformation of the medical system lead by men.

2) I disagree with this fellow that we must, every one of us, hotline every doctor or nurse who attends birth where the woman is not upright, where the cord is clamped, and where drugs are used. The issue of maternal and informed choice is a huge issue here. It is not as simple as saying the doctors should not do these things because it is not scientific, and that they are committing abuse if they do those things. It is not as simple as saying a woman is guilty of abuse if she chooses epidural which forces her to birth supine under the influence of narcotics and opiods. These are socially acceptable as "standard medical practices".

Because these important "pieces" addressing these systemic issues are not in place, and arenot widely accepted as not good practice, wrong, or leading to abuse of the newborn, we can not address it with hotlining people. The pieces include engaging, educating, and supporting the people IN THE MEDICAL and MIDWIFERY systems who are doing birth right.

The only outcome of hotlining the nurse in the film would be more chaos for the family BECAUSE there is NO social consciousness to see the doctor's actions of prying the mother's hands off her baby after prematurely "amputating" the baby's cord and "robbing him of his cord blood", which I believe to be true. There is not a social consciousness or a legal system in place to address the nurse using the baby as a "teaching tool" and to see her behavior as violent and abusive, but I believe it is. If I thought it would do something to support the baby and the family, and to STOP that nurse from ever touching one more baby, yeah, I'd be the first one to hotline her, the doctor, the hospital, the risk management people who dictate to the caregivers what they have to do. RIGHT NOW, there is NOTHING in place in the system to look at their behavior should they be hotlined. There is no social or political will to look at the impact of standard medical practices on the laboring, birthing, and newborn being.

Physicians and nurses practice what they are taught, they are peer-reviewed, and their oversight is by hospital risk managers, health and liability insurance companies. Some resist and overcome that training and rise up to do what is right for mothers and babies inspite of the ostracization by peers and high risk premiums. They are our resources and they deserve to also be supported and protected, not lumped in with all of those who do not practice consciously. These are doctors and midwives who encourage women NOT to induce, NOT to use narcotic, NOT to do elective cesarean, to BE upright, to touch her baby and bring her baby to her chest. They are doctors who advocate and intervene with nurses whose just itch to get that baby away to do the measurements and whatever they think is more important than baby in mother's arms. There are nurses who intervene for the woman and baby with physicians who have agenda to manage their schedules. It's a complicated, human, organic system.

I know some caregivers are very ingrained in their training to the point of mass child abuse, those who have, in their own fear and greed perpetuated the current system. Maybe they are just victims of their own training and routinely, every day, in every birth, harmed a baby but engaging the child protective system is not the answer. It might bring attention to the issue but the social and political will not support it. The reporter becomes the nut.

I've written a lot and asked a lot of questions about how we can support caregivers to become aware of the sentience of the human newborn AND process the impact of being aware of what they've done, thinking it was right. I'll say more about that in a minute. Most people are unaware of the real needs of the newborn and infant, and much of what I observe is negatively impactful on a baby.

ANYTIME we engage with a pregnant woman, a laboring or birthing woman and baby, or a newborn baby without calming our nervous system, without remembering this is a BABY, this couple's baby, without remembering that this baby is feeling, experiencing, remembering, imprinting the experience, well, it's a violation, plain and simple. The simple act of swearing in the presence of a pregnant woman, attending her baby's birth while stressed out or fearful, or with your own time needs as a priority, or after the birth saying mindless things to and in front of the baby (ie. "Oh, baby, you'll live."), or continually reaching in to check the temp of a baby or suction his nose (so you are DOING something), or even gently stimulating that baby is a violation of his space and body. So, in my humble opinion, no one is immune from being hotlined.

So, hotlining the caregiver for abuse, that is a result of training, ignorance, unconsciousnes, or maternal choice, is not the answer. THE SYSTEM is not set up for it. The only benefit I can imagine is that it would cause the current, ineffective child protective systems to collapse. But that would only happen effectively if two things happened. ONE, it would take a massive, organized effort across every state, and, as the fellow suggests, "a moratorium" on charging doctors with abuse, and TWO, it would have to be in orchestration with the wonderful doctors, nurses, and midwives and their groups who also believe it needs to stop so would be participants. There is much to do before that happens. Perhaps, it would take only one big profile case to make it happen. Think "Rosa Parks." But massive amounts of planning and support, and MEDIA, would have to be in place after an intense effort by many to create awareness and change. MASSES would have to be AWARE of the CONSCIOUSNESS of the BABY.

The big problem is, as I have written about here repeatedly, the masses are not aware AND there is NO STANDARDIZED SYSTEM OF MATERNAL-CHILD CARE in obstetric or midwifery care. I have often used the proverbial, "fox in charge of the hen house" to describe standard medical practices. In my film, a CNM who has practiced at home and in hospitals says, "Women and babies have been harmed by standard medical practices." This is not an indictment of doctors and nurses, and validation of midwives. It IS an indictment of hospital-focused birth, rather than mother-baby focused birth. It is a statement about how midwives are also practicing in ways that harm women and babies. It is a statement about the SYSTEM of maternal-child health care.

Midwives, fighting for their legal rights, are being forced down the same darned path that obstetrics have gone -- by the nose, lead by hospital and legal dictates. THIS has allowed a numbing and dumbing of our society so that most people no longer see the abusive part of what they see. People watch a stranger holding down their flailing, screaming, fighting-for-his-life baby, and they smile and coo. They are numb. They no longer are in their body. They are observing the violation of a baby and unable to act. They don't protect their own baby. This baby's space, his boundaries are being profoundly violated, impacting his way of being in the world, with people, for the rest of his life. And, they smile and coo ... at the beauty of birth and new life. Yeah, yeah.

Midwives are less likely to do this, but increasingly more likely to do unnecessary, violating interventions because now she also has to protect her ASSets. As Dr. Stuart Fischbein says in his interview for my film, the only way to change this is TORT REFORM that addresses all the parties involved -- hospital risk management, liability insurance companies, health insurance companies who all DICTATE to doctors AND midwives AND nurses how they must practice.

So, I AM DOING MY PART OF THE PICTURE or PUZZLE ... I am working very hard, a one-woman production team, a year on the road now, to make a film that will awaken the hearts and minds of the broad spectrum of people involved in birth -- EVERYONE. Men, women, caregivers of all varieties ... with the hope that they will see birth as the BABY's, as the soul/baby's journey into physical form. Once anyone gets that -- that EVERY THING you feel, think, say, and do in the presence of a pregnant, laboring, birthing woman is imprinting her baby's brain and soul, one can not do what they have done with such harsh, unaware and unconscious treatment. Once the MASSES get that we will look at maternal-child health care system differently: Preserving the mother-baby connection will be a guiding principle in all we do.

We need tort reform that ALLOWS us to insist upon a SYSTEM of STANDARDIZED CARE based on EVIDENCE-BASED SCIENCE, with a system in place that allows us to have someone other than the hospital systems, ACOG, and malpractice insurance "overseeing" the care our babies' receive.

MY PIECE of the puzzle is support MEN, fathers, who have been harmed by the standard medical practices, and fathers-to-be, to take their rightful place in the birth of their baby ... and to create a movement, a shift of thinking, to see that the human being is fully aware, fully feeling, experiencing, interacting, and imprinting whatever is happening to him or her WHEREVER he or she is born. For example, cutting the cord before the MOTHER's body releases the baby's resuscitator, the placenta, "allowing" fathers to prematurely separate the baby from her body, suctioning on the perineum, or at all "for meconium risk", stimulating the baby with rough towels or strange hands, hats, chattering voices, taking temperatures ALL BEFORE BABY AND MOTHER make eye contact or disrupting that, and before FATHER has engaged with the baby and mother IN THEIR WAY ... these are all violations of the mother-baby RE-CONNECTION in the first moments of birth.

How could I call the hotline on every single birth I have seen, experienced, or known about for disrupting the mother-baby connection, or how could I hotline the hospital for policies and rules, sanctioned by risk managers, policy makers, insurance companies that dictate to the nurse and doctor that they do "everything they know to do in case"? How could I, or any Doula or family member, hotline the doctor or nurse for following the wishes of the mother and father, or a woman who decides she does need to use epidural because she's been in labor for 20 hours and she is exhausted? We can't shoot everyone and ask questions later and let a governmental system "figure it" and provide for the family ... we see how that does NOT WORK.

I need all of you out there to get it ... the needs of the BABY in relationship to his or her mama and daddy ... that we all participated in the perpetuation of the system as it is ... that we can change it by creating a maternal-child, maternity health care system based on the evidence, with an oversight that is NOT peer, with laws that force health insurance and liability insurance to do what is right.

NOW, back to editing the film for fathers, the fundraiser edition, called, "The Moment ... of Awe." It will be ready by the end of March ... I swear. I have a professional editor scheduled for the first week of March to "put the magical fairy dust on it".

Documentary Filmmaker needs pics related to circumcision

James Loewen is looking for high resolution images to include in a video documentary of our intactivist history.

Seeking images from the first NOCIRC Symposium, photos of Marilyn Milos circa 1980-90 and high resolution scans of newspaper headlines and articles of circumcision related topics.

Please send high resolution images (300 dpi 4x6" size or greater) and any pertinent information to James' email: Intactivist<>shaw.ca
Or to Gloria Lemay birthuniserve. com