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)

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Woman writes letter to her OB

From VBACFACTS.com

An OB you like or who makes you comfortable isn’t enough

Many women do not interview OBs/midwives when selecting their VBAC care provider. They either stay with the GYN who has been providing their well-woman care or the same OB who performed their cesarean because they like them.

Women they really believe that if they are good patients, if they are friendly, if they don’t question to much, if they are good-natured, their OB will treat them with the same courtesy by reading their birth plan, respecting their wishes, supporting their desire for a vaginal birth, and creating an environment where VBAC is the goal. In short, the woman believes that she will receive a genuine opportunity to VBAC.

However, as we read below, it is not enough to like your OB. It’s not enough that you feel comfortable with them. They need to support VBAC. They need to see the value in vaginal birth.


Dear Dr. XYZ:

It is with great reluctance that I submit payment to you for services rendered.

I hired you for an intervention free VBAC. Instead I had EVERY intervention I told you I did not want. Under your care, I failed in the most basic way a woman can fail – I failed to birth my children. You ignored each and every point on my birth plan. I cannot help but wonder if you even read it, or if you ever had any intention of following it.

I needed time for my body to do what it was designed to do. I needed support from my doctor, from my nurses, and from my hospital. What I did NOT need was to be pumped full of drugs, have multiple interventions that I specifically stated I did not want and pushed into a surgical procedure. I am especially struck by our final interaction prior to consent. Never, for the rest of my life, will I forget how you made your speech, and then stalked out of the room. I recall thinking “I’m actually paying to be treated like this? To be verbally bereted and physically tortured?”

I have no joy when recalling my children’s births.

I have regrets.

I regret coming in for an appointment that day when labor was in the early stages. I regret listening to you that I should go to the hospital “just for some monitoring.” I regret not leaving when labor stalled. I regret agreeing to pitocin. I regret allowing you to turn up the pitocin to a point where I could not stand it without pain relief. I regret getting the epidural instead of just screaming my lungs out until it was over. I regret letting you artificially rupture my membranes. I regret allowing the monitoring – internal and external. I regret not telling you that this was my baby, my birth experience, and I wasn’t having a C-section without a court order.

But what I regret most is choosing you as my provider. I knew going in that you had a high C-section rate, that you had already given me most of those interventions with my first child. But I liked you, and allowed that to influence my decision.

How I wished I had chosen someone I loathed who would have worked with me to get the natural birth I desired. In the end, liking you got me nothing that I REALLY wanted.

So, here is your money. I don’t particularly think you have earned it, but I want to be free of this one last reminder of the worst experience of my life.

Sincerely,

Jenn in St. Louis

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