Post Partum
Support
For Fathers
The moment a man sees his baby
for the first time outside the womb is
His Moment of Awe
The Moment of Awe is a moment of union of the mother-baby-father and is a neural integration of all that has happened.
This family moment needs to be honored and protected by the caregivers who attend birth: doctors, nurse, midwives, and doulas.
"Empowering birth" is not just about the mother. The man is also becoming a father ... what he is experiencing also defines him as a man, a father, and a husband.
The baby is the one whose birth it is, coming into being into the relationship with the mother and father and with the world. How they experience this matters. What they are meant to experience is a moment of union.
No matter what happened, the mother-baby-father/other can have that moment - a "do-over" that creates new neural wiring - in a therapeutic process. I facilitate this process and support the father/other to regain his place as the protector.
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"Janel is a woman of rare vision, a passionate film maker, and dauntless advocate for giving babies the best possible start in life. As this film clearly demonstrates, she knows how to fight for fathers as well." - David Chamberlain, PhD, Author of "The Mind of Your Newborn Baby" and "Windows to the Womb: Revealing the Conscious Baby from Conception to Birth"
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"Janel's work is not only brilliant, it is riveting. It answers a lot of questions about disconnects at every level from the personal to the institutional." - Toni Rahman, Author of "Being In My Body: What You Might Not Have Known about Trauma, Dissociation & The Brain."
Our culture does not acknowledge you men as being impacted by the disempowering experience of modern birth. Yours or your baby's.
Rather than experiencing a moment of union with your partner and baby, you, the father, is traumatized by witnessing what happens to them. You are expected to protect them, but you couldn't. You couldn't go against the hospital protocols and policies.
So, you fathers, leave the hospital - in shock - with a wounded wife and baby. This trauma of all three of you goes unspoken, unacknowledged, and unresolved. You have no place to talk about your experience.
In my process that typically begins with the father, I listen deeply to you and support you on a neural level acknowledging that you, the new father:
- struggle to know how to support your partner (and crying baby) processing her pain and disappointment from the baby's birth.
- have no place to share your story of your pain and loss and joy, and your guilt and shame at not "being the protector.
- go back to work, you help at home and with baby at night, and you are exhausted.
- feel hurt by the loss of time and attention from partner - while watching the mom's intimacy with the baby growing.
- sadly, silently struggle alone with the conflicting, scary feelings towards your baby and fatherhood. Your are normal!
- grieve and are angry, and then feel guilty about your behavior around your need for and the loss of sexual intimacy.
Let me support you to get back your sanity, your relationship, and enjoy your new role as dad. Schedule a complimentary half-hour consultation.
I do pay-what-you-can for fathers and mothers in the military and I donate my services to families whose baby was born while father was deployed.
Janel Mirendah
Janel is an Attachment and Birth Trauma Therapist and an expert in newborn communication. She incorporates a Master's in Counseling with energetic CranioSacral modality, and study of neural processes to create a new and science-based process. Janel is the creator of a poignant movie about the father's disenfranchisement in the birth process, The Other Side of the Glass.
Janel began her career pre-college working two years with a clinical psychologist in a Veteran's Hospital. Almost two decades later she would convince the Board of Directors of a domestic violence shelter to see and address the needs of the men, and she developed their program. She has worked with men/fathers in treatment facility and juvenile justice.
Janel's father was present at her (very traumatic) birth in a time when only 4% of men were "allowed." It's no surprise that she would follow the path of studying psychology of birth trauma, and would be deeply aware of the profound need of the father/other to be there, and to be an empowered partner, rather than a witness to unspeakable experience.
Janel's long time regard for men's experience - while coming of age in feminist seventies - and her advocacy since then, culminates in her film. Her passion is for supporting the father's story to be heard and felt, and to have His Moment of Awe - stepping into his power as a father. She believes the world can be healed if we create a standard of care in birth where the father and mother-baby are ALL protected as a unit, and they are the first and only ones to touch their baby.
Janel's joy is supporting a father to have that moment - whether at the time of birth or later in a healing session. Find out how.
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"Janel is a woman of rare vision, a passionate film maker, and dauntless advocate for giving babies the best possible start in life. As this film clearly demonstrates, she knows how to fight for fathers as well." - David Chamberlain, PhD, Author of "The Mind of Your Newborn Baby" and "Windows to the Womb: Revealing the Conscious Baby from Conception to Birth"
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"Janel's work is not only brilliant, it is riveting. It answers a lot of questions about disconnects at every level from the personal to the institutional." - Toni Rahman, Author of "Being In My Body: What You Might Not Have Known about Trauma, Dissociation & The Brain."
