Preach It!

No one can tell a woman what is best for her and her baby ... waterbirth, homebirth, hospital birth, doctor, midwife, Unassisted Childbirth (UC) or cesarean surgery ... it is for her and her baby to know. The best we can do is support her to access, trust, and know her own inner wisdom and communicate with the Being within her - the One whose birth it is through her womb and the man. - Janel Mirendah, Attachment/Birth trauma therapist, Filmmaker of The Other Side of the Glass.

Watch It! (The Trailer)

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Your first reaction will be anger and to dismiss the whole idea ... because of the outcome of it we now live with and are trying to undo.  

Lets put all the pieces together ... pieces not usually considered in mainstream culture but that is based on neuro science, attachment therapy, mind-body-soul modalities and science.

This is contrary to what we know now that our first reaction to this is to be angry and to dismiss it, but I challenge you to consider some of the truth of it. It truly can be in an negative sort of way. In all of life we have to accept the negative in order to also acknowledge the positive. We do know that stress impacts women's milk supply and her milk impacts her baby.
 
We might want to remember that women didn't even have the right to vote until 1920. Women have been unhappy a long in a male dominated world. They certainly did have a lot to be upset about and even today women have a whole lot more to be upset about in this modern world. How could this NOT be true? 

Our milk effects our babies.Our babies effect us and our milk. I'd like to research and to hear from people who might have information about how they came to believe that babies past 9 months would go blind and have "brain disease" when today we know that this absolutely the opposite.

As a CranialSacral-based birth trauma therapist  I do know that colic has much to do with the physiological and emotional experience of birth for the baby. You can read my old website Infant Parent Healing page on Colic. I know that the placenta is an informer for the baby of how the world is...through the mother, through her thoughts and feeling, through her hormones; and, I know that the breasts take over this job from the placenta. It makes so much sense to me that just like prenatally, the mothers emotional state, her stress will impact her milk and that this will be felt and experienced by the baby. How could it not? 

So, of course they were right.  And if it feels uncomfortable to you then you might want to consider that it goes both ways. Her happy, contented emotional state can also help produce milk that is happy. .. truly of a higher quality.  What they didn't understand is that life and the woman's experience in the world that they were creating was causing her a lot of stress. What they did was use it to further with disempower women's bodies and we need to make sure that we're not doing the same by not looking closer. Not throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater in our journey to reclaim our rights over our bodies, our babies, and birth and breastfeeding.

We now have the eyes and ears and heart, mind, and research to look at the full picture on many levels that they didn't have then.  

I think if I or a farmer told you that a cow who's being abused and neglected and overpowered may not give the best quality milk and that the baby cow is reacting that this would be accepted.  Farmers know, and we'd think, "Oh yeah, well sure."  Why don't they apply this is to humans?

All mammals, especially two-legged, because we have complex mental capacity experience stress in our daily lives. And don't we all know that in this holiday season breastfeeding mothers are going to be stressed, and their babies are going to reacting. Crying, belly aches and the old "colic" label will be pulled out by those in the  environment who grew up with "bad information," as David Chamberlain would say. (Watch for his new book, "Windows to the Womb"  coming out in January. GOOD information!) Those who were taught formula is better .. and other lies perpetrated even today.

So, of course, they were very wrong too, and we live the consequence of this. The mis-educated, lied-to people of previous generations are products of a society that was taught to negate the true purpose and power of women's bodies. Breasts were sexual parts, for men's pleasure. Women's defective bodies made "bad milk". They were taught that breastfeeding is bad so the extended, exclusive, exposed breastfeeding stresses them ... some of them probably will even get belly aches over it themselves this holiday season!!

I find things like this to be such a gem ... It helps us understand the unwinding of this knot we got into and are undoing.

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

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

Doctor's Voices - Michael Odent, MD

Human Rights Violations

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
In both relationships and life trust begets trust.
Generosity begets generosity.
Love begets love.
Be the spark, especially when it's dark.

--Note from the Universe, www.tut.com

"Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so children have very little time with their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world." - Mother Theresa