"The Other Side of the Glass" covers a broad spectrum ... from the Soul and consciousness, to some primal brain development, to father's stories of their experiences, to how the medical system is a war machine, and how fathers are disempowered by their own birth which most likely included circumcision.
I've read some comments that the film doesn't tell people/men/fathers what they can do. Yes, it does:
1) Don't go the hospital.
2) We Can Be Much Kinder and Do No Harm give the information about suctioning and cord clamping and give a website where you can copy a form by George M. Morley, MD, OB to give to your doctor saying "I do not give consent to cut the cord, to suction." But they don't honor birth plans and this is going to create another battle between mothers and doctors, midwives and doctors.
3) Rise up and demand reform of the system.
The problem is that hospital birth is a battle zone, and how do we legislate compassion, kindness and respect for the human newborn and the mama-baby dyad and mama-baby-daddy unity. We can't. We have to undergo a massive reform from the inside out. The point of the film is not just to give men the info they need. It's out there. Men know it; although I do share it. The point is that MEN ARE POWERLESS to protect their babies and partner in the hospital setting. IF you are lucky, you will have ONE medical staff member (out of 2-30 people) who respects birth as sacred event in your life, respects YOU and your baby and partner (as souls) and honors birth as THE most important brain development, foundation-building experience of your baby's life. You might count yourself a recipient of a true MIRACLE if you experience a COMPLETE team of medical staff members who KNOW THE SCIENCE, the REAL SCIENCE of physiology of birth and imprinting and pre and perinatal psychology, AND who have the INTENTION and AGENDA to create the most peaceful, empowering birth with the science -based GOAL of PRESERVING THE MAMA-BABY.
That is one of a few hypotheses put forward by my film ... we can create a healthy, happy, and harmonious humanity by keeping mother and baby intact. I suggest that the medical system is a conscious and unconscious system of disconnecting human beings from their mothers in order to yield power over them for their lifetime. Yes, I do believe SOME of them KNOW what they are doing. Others are just inflicting upon human newborns what happened to them and what they are indoctrinated to do. Preserve the system first; people, if it works out. When mother and baby are separated at THE TIME nature designed profound attachment and exquisite transitioning from the placenta to the breast, the mother will not believe in her own power as woman and mother; and, the baby's nervous system is imprinted with pain, separation, and fear and being saved by the system. All of it these days, since women and men won the right of the father's to be PRESENT and not on the other side of the glass. But he is still made impotent to protect his loved one. Men can not stop this during the birth of their baby WITHOUT being in a warrior, battling, warring mindset. Most often, he is going to lose the battle. Men feel like failures when they lose the battle. It's a very efficient intervention, medicalized birth is.
Baby girls and baby boys are being born in this environment of chaos, disempowerment, and battling. Then the boy is circumcised, and I propose, that perhaps this is why fathers freeze when strangers enter the room and dictate the most smallest of demands on what he can and can't do. It's likely why men stand powerless, emotionally frozen, hands over crotch while their partner and wife are abused and mutilated. Perhaps, this is why we have warrior mentality in our culture in everything we do -- being born into a environment of chaos, distrust, pain, and violence. I think so ... America "wars on" everything. From where does this mentality in America come? The war on poverty, hunger, drugs, crime, child abuse, war, cancer, even teen pregnancy and now texting. When America defines a "problem" it goes into battle to resolve it.
Fathers, whether circumcised or intact, but especially circ'd men, will NOT be able to protect their baby and partner in hospital setting. I propose that this distrust, fear, feeling of lack, and need to fight for everything is created in the early brain in the experience of leaving the womb. Rather coming naturally, drug free to our mother's arms and breast, in the safety of the father, we (society) are induced, drugged, and greeted by masked strangers with rough towels, rubber gadgets, and plastic tubes. We are taken to cubicles, bright lights, and further violated. And, that's a good birth that was vaginal. Cesarean birth is an additional experience of terror, confusion, and pain for the human brain designed for a totally different experience.
Today when couples are preparing for the safe, loving, empowering birth in the hospital they must prepare to battle, to fight for this. In 2011 we have to fight for what we have always known, fight against medical disruption -- a very recent development (100 years.) Many couples and baby lose the battle ... they do EVERYTHING right and still, they end up with a surgical birth, separation of baby prematurely from mother (cord cutting), and harsh treatment of the baby. They have to FIGHT to not have IV lines, to not be in bed, to be drug-free and not augmented and rushed on an artificial UN-scientific time table. They have to FIGHT to keep their baby IN THEIR ARMS, with no bulbing, immediate cord clamping, and suctioning, all done "in case" of the extremely rare case of meconium aspiration. ALL of these are shown to be damaging to the baby and yet they continue to do it. EVEN if it is necessary they can be expected to do so respectfully, gently, and in the mother's or father's arms. A mother and father have to prepare to fight to not have ointment, shots, measuring, and bathing - to simply keep the baby in their arms. The hospital environment PROMOTES separation of the human newborn from the mother, shown in the research for fifty years to be severely detrimental to the human being.
Everything developed to help empower women in their births ... birth plans, Doulas, fathers, Bradley method, hypnobabies, water ... eventually is met with oppositional force - the medical system and it's Faces ... the people ... educated, licensed, and state-sanctioned caregivers who do not have to follow the real science. There is no standard of care so every hospital in any city will have it's own policies, NOT based on science but history of litigation. In that hospital the doctor has his own preferences and on every shift the nurse has hers. They will all say what they do is "scientific". It is not. They are allowed to misuse science to increase their efforts to maintain the system's status quo. They say, "We are in charge." And, so that over time these effective things become less effective. THEN, the hospital staff and researchers (paid by Big Pharm companies) says, "Seee, it doesn't work". I believe the growing cesarean rate is a DIRECT result of the increasing battle between the hospital and the natural, physiological model of birth known as midwifery. It is about money and control.
I have a piece in the film where Marilyn Milos, RN and a few others made that point of the impact of men at HIS birth, being circumcised makes a man powerless at his child's birth. I make the point that MEN need to be the ones to rise up and change the system. And, here is ONE of the points of the film: Men can't protect their child IN the moment of giving birth ... and though that's where the movement has been going, where people thought this film was going, I am proposing that preparing to go to battle to have a natural, normal, gentle, intervention and drug free birth, and being respected in an environment that is controlled by a mentality that does not want that IS part of the development of the "war mindset".
The profoundly sad truth is that men can't stop what happens to their partner once they enter the hospital. Many are staying out of the hospital, and sometimes that is more dangerous, but most of the time it is not. But the point is, their choices are trampled on by laws that allow hospitals and doctors the power .. to slice open women without true need and then deny her access to a vaginal birth later based on money and litigation reasons. A birthing couples choices are trampled by the hospital system's ability to misuse science, such as forcing cesarean and circumcision, all upheld by powerful interests with monetary goals, not the well being of human BABIES. That would include ME and YOU and YOUR babies. WE are all victims of this medical mindset of controlling nature -- for over one hundred years. MEDICINE is the alternative, not nature. Circumcision is a big one.
Men, circumcised and non circumcised men, can rise up (no pun intended, just the right word) to change the system ... NOT when they are experiencing the birth of their baby. This is how men will protect their partner and babies, and protect humanity ... the empathy and connection needed to have the world we all say we want ... but alludes humans. It is a journey to seeing one's own birth experience as the foundational time for the life they are living now. It's a journey to embrace the process in a healing way. One of the ways we do that, as Marilyn Milos and father, Mike Hagan tell us ... to create the change, stop the harming. Men will protect their baby and future babies by demanding change of the medical model of obstetric care that harms our women, babies and men.
I am sad to say that for the father's facing going to the hospital today and this year, he is not going to be able to protect his baby. While I do share the science so that he can say, as DOCTORS advise him, "I do not give my consent for you to xyz", I also implore YOU to rise up and change the system for others. Men can be educated to know what the science it ... but when they are on the battle ground they are not in control. Men, take a friend with you; go with a friend to support him during birth but know until we stop the dynamic of the hospital environment in charge of birth, allowed to misuse science for their agenda, litigation avoidance and time management fathers, MEN, will be at the mercy of the hospital staff. Preparing to go there to have a sacred, natural, empowered, or just plain SAFE birth like men are led to believe, is a little like preparing to go to Kabul and open up a sweet little shop selling cookies and tea. Once one truly sees the extraordinary development of the brain, body, and being of the laboring, birthing, newborn baby and how "normal" medicalized birth represents torture to the newborn, this statement will not seem absurd. I do not say it lightly, with little regard for our troops. My son, an Army Lt deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan is one of my greatest teachers in understanding this concept that many, many fathers began voicing to me.
It's time for the "battle" to be outside the hospital - in the legal and judicial system - and led by the men/fathers, defined by the men/fathers. DURING the labor and birth of his child a man is UNABLE TO PROTECT HIMSELF and his family. We need to create a system, a social expectation that medical caregivers BE THE ONES to change what THEY DO TO BABIES, women and men. Men either before or after they've experienced it need to rise up and create a new system. DEMAND legal changes be made that ensure that the baby is treated kindly, with respect, and that the mother-baby connection is preserved and protected. He will heal himself in the process and he will heal his baby and partner .. whatever happened to him and his family.
www.theothersideoftheglass.com
How we protect and support the physiological need of the human newborn attachment sequence is the foundation for creating safe birth wherever birth happens.