Moment of Awe
9 week postpartum support
I support new fathers to “put on the oxygen mask first” to support the mother who is struggling with overwhelm, disappointment, depression, and a crying baby and returning to work – in the comfort of their own home – so they create a softer connection with their newborn and reclaim their relationship.
Birth Videography
Your baby’s birth is the most important day of his or her life and it deserves to be preserved on video as much as your wedding, and your baby’s birthdays, holidays, and graduations.
PACKAGE INCLUDES:
Videoing of your baby’s birth and the first hour of life (discrete or explicit as you wish)
One unedited digital copy of the video (an edited version of the video is available for additional fee)
A family session to debrief the experience.
I support the father to be deeply, viscerally heard and supported in his story of his experience in the container of a safe, compassionate relationship. When the father experiences being heard he is able to be a better support system for the mother-baby.
The Moment of Awe is a 9-week postpartum therapeutic support process where the father, mother process their experience individually, and together, and the goal is for each person to:
become aware of the sentience of their new baby;
understand that the baby has his or her story of being born and wants to share it and be heard;
learn how to listen to their baby’s communication,
experience individual session to process their experience of their baby’s birth, and when ready,
participate in a family session of hearing and re-patterning the baby’s story of their of his or her birth experience;
resulting in an integration of what happened to them in the birth process;
and baby will almost always spontaneously do the self-attachment breast crawl.
“I don’t know what “method” Janel uses other than being incredibly intuitive and connected to the sacred knowingness of children. She also has a depth of knowledge surrounding trauma that is invaluable. My sweet Atticus has been connected to Janel since he was in the womb. His pregnancy was not an easy one and he was so lucky to have her when I wasn’t emotionally available. I will forever be grateful for Janel, her work, and her impact on my family. She is a gift.”
My approach is baby-led and mama-baby focused, and it is grounded in the modality of cranioSacral therapy and a traditional mental health counseling background.
Through craniosacral training in 2000-4, processing my own birth and my experience of giving birth, I became aware of my intuitive gifts that I had blocked in childhood.
I have and teach the ability to hear the baby’s communication. My upcoming book is called, “Listening to Babies”. I support the mother to listen to her baby’s communication, to build confidence so she can hear the baby’s voice and then hear his or her experience of birth. This facilitates the mother and baby integrating their individual experiences and coming together in a new way. This allows for the breastfeeding, rest, and interactions to improve immediately. A level of bonding and attachment that people generally believe is lost is most accessible.
The 9-week intensive postpartum care can be immediately after birth or anytime in the first 9-12 months postpartum. In a perfect world it would be the first 9 weeks, but often it is at the 4-10 months of age that we can do very profound work.
The 9 week package includes:
18-20 hours of in-person processing in scheduled and on-call support sessions, using bio-dynamic craniosacral based trauma healing modality.
The time is determined by the needs of the family, and includes 2 60-90 minute individual sessions for mother and father. It can include consults with grandmother, doula, and caregiver, if willing.
a 3-hour completion process that I call “Moment of Awe” that is a process with the mother, father, and baby, and grandmother/others who were there at the birth,
Soul Portraiture ongoing to document the process and that will function as a “parenting manual.”
Infant massage instruction is incorporated into the sessions
Unlimited email or text communication via Tawk - where it is private and you will have a record of the support, and phone access.
I am in DC Metro area. I work with two families per month. And, I am available for minimum two-day intensive support on location outside of DC.
Go to my store and fill out the form to set up a free half hour phone consultation.
Every mother-baby and father deserve to have the opportunity to process the baby’s birth and heal where they were disrupted, whether or not it was a true medical emergency or just the routine ritual imposed upon them.
Mothers naturally have more support; and, I also support the mother to process her disappointing, painful, or traumatic experience of giving birth with same deep listening and safety. The intention is to support their relationship through the processing of the trauma and to show them and support them to hear their baby’s communication.
“After a traumatic birth experience, my son and I spent weeks trying to recover, reconnect, and find peace. It seemed nothing would soothe his cries at times. I felt helpless and depressed as I struggled to provide him with comfort. My husband and I held our son all the time and provided him with attachment parenting techniques. It was only while breast-feeding that we were able to find a small window of peaceful softness. After a few months, I began to reluctantly accept the all too popular label of “colicky”.
And then I met Janel. Our son was three months old and awakening every hour on the hour and crying. Janel provided me as a mother, the opportunity to “be with” my son as he released the body memories of his awful birth experience. He cried, raged, and then slept. Janel knowingly taught me how to be present with my son and this “experience” without trying to control it or alter it. She taught me genuine respect of another soul. Her touch was loving, yet strong and competent. Janel later led us (including my husband) in re-experiencing our birth in a gentle way that led us to great healing and harmony. ”
WHY FATHERS?
Fathers are having a big experience too. Fathers are also depressed.
I support the father first - help him to “put the oxygen mask on first.” I facilitate the father to safely and gently share his story of becoming father, that was deeply disrupted. I support him to reclaim his rightful place and role in his family during the postpartum time - protector, nurturer, and supporter.
This in-depth, intensive support - that focuses on healing the mother and baby where they were disrupted - and he father witnessed. Usually the father was powerless - in birth process and in reconnecting after birth.
Integrating what happened to them by intentionally processing it in a safe space is what is missing from most efforts to stop crying, increase sleep, and feel that connection with baby that mother and father desire.
The father’s role in birth is very violated in modern birth. Fathers are traumatized by witnessing what happened to - and not being able to protect - their birthing partner and baby. Our culture does not acknowledge men as being impacted by the disempowering experience of modern birth.
Fathers leave the hospital - in shock - with a wounded wife and baby, and so:
- FATHERS struggle to know how to support their partner (and crying baby) processing her pain and disappointment from the baby's birth.
- FATHERS have no place to share their story of their pain and loss and joy, and their guilt and shame at not "being the protector."
- FATHERS go back to work, they help at home and with baby at night, and they are exhausted.
- FATHERS feel hurt by the loss of time and attention from partner while watching the mom's intimacy with the baby.
- FATHERS sadly silently struggle with the conflicting, scary feelings towards their baby and fatherhood.
- FATHERS grieve and are angry, and then feel guilty about their behavior around their need for and the loss of sexual intimacy.
Self-Attachment Breast Crawl
Pictures of the 9 stages ©Healthy Children Project, Inc.
Every mammal baby on the planet, including humans, has a biological imperative to complete a neural circuitry of birth: crawl with gentle support of the mother to the breast and self attach. This happens anywhere from 20 to fifty minutes after birth, after mother and baby have explored each other.
The neural circuitry of birth begins with baby initiating labor, with mother, then proceeding through it in communication with her body and her consciousness, and then birthing into her hands. The mother and baby will take a pause, rest, and begin the re-connection process that will define neurally their mother-baby attachment for life.
Induction, drugs, interventions, disruptions by caregivers during labor and at birth all imprint the neural circuitry of birth. Most of us are quite disrupted. We are all very traumatized by our standard medicalized birth and the overwhelm of it being true is what keeps most people from pursuing engaging in healing. Where to start?
Most mothers and fathers are too traumatized to seek it out, and the medical system and even traditional psychology deny the impact of medical birth on the baby and mother-baby connection. That is why it requires a commitment to 9 weeks and the early it is started, the easier it is. And, the less retraumatizing of baby, mother, and father in a world that doesn’t see how immediate and long lasting the medicalized birth trauma is.
“The mother-baby, father, grandmother will be held deeply to recover from a traumatic birth.”
COMMITMENT OF FATHER TO HEALING
Over eighteen years, and as result of doing the docuseries. The Other Side of the Glass about men’s experience at birth, in which I sat with fathers all over the country listening to their experiences, I have found it is critical for the father to lead the process of resolving the trauma.
When the father didn’t participate I realized that the mother and baby experience a deepening that further alienates the father. Related to that, it is critical that the father support the mother-baby to do therapy so that financial issues do not exacerbate their relationship problems. Many mothers who desperately wanted to work with me chose not to continue when the father was upset about spending money on therapy. I would work with the mother but many times the process of therapy would continue to annoy the father.
It is true that the family is experiencing financial issues while mothers are off work for hopefully - for her and baby - a minimum of six weeks. It is tragic to me that our culture does this to the baby and mother and does not financially support the father and mother while they are adjusting to the most important job they’ll ever do. That said, hiring a midwife, a doula, and me to do postpartum support and processing is money well spent. The health and connection of the mother-baby relationship and supporting their relationship is one of the most important things a couple can pay for.
Because the process is mama-baby centered, the exact time and needs are determined by the mother and baby’s needs, and their support. Most productive though is one to two full days, and on-call follow up until the mother and baby are stabilized. I first support the father and we work out a plan and schedule.
GRANDMOTHERS
No one is more biologically and evolutionarily prepared to protect and love the mother and baby than the maternal grandmother. The grandmother’s profound role in the baby and mother’s lives has been forgotten - usurped by medical model of birth where nurses replaced midwives and grandmothers. The Doula profession has evolved in past twenty-years to protect the mother in the system. But it can’t. We are in great need of a revolution of birth and grandmothering.
VIDEO
Video is very helpful to have video of your baby’s birth. I am available to document the baby’s birth on video and photography. I am there as a sacred witness and observant of the baby’s experience in order to support the mother-father-baby postpartum to process what happened. Why would we not include a debriefing for every baby’s birth? Why do doctors believe they can do what they do and not affect people? We are programmed to believe the baby is “just fine” but couples go home traumatized and blaming each other. Chapter 3 of my film looks at this. The baby has an their own experience of being born. Who wouldn’t want their mother and father to “get them”? Get what they experienced coming into their lives at birth? I find video invaluable when doing birth trauma work.
SOUL PORTRAITS/PARENTING MANUAL
A Soul Portrait for the baby, and a series of portraits are included to use as tools for ongoing support. These are pieces of art so “easy” to use for busy young families. Mother and father and grandmother have option of creating a series of portraits that are that “parenting manual” they say we don’t have. The manual - the info - is within, within the mother who made and birthed the baby. The more undisturbed her body is, the more she trusts her body and instincts, the more she makes the most informed choices she can - for that baby. I do a series of portraits throughout the process. The Soul Portraits we do in the 9 week postpartum process create that manual to support mothers who live in a very unnatural, technological world.
In this video are two sessions with medical physicians who attended the births.
The first is a baby born by cesarean and the second baby was born at home with a home birth physician.
The second is of a session with the 16-month-old baby in my film, and the home birth physician and doula attendant participate. This is 8 minutes of a 2.5 hour session after many months of the mother processing what was by most standards a “pretty good home birth”.
In the first birth, as we prepared to leave the hospital, the mother spontaneously asked the obstetric physician who did the cesarean to participate in a debriefing process with the baby. The mother wanted the OB to talk to the baby about what what he did and why, about what happened to her. What an open-minded guy! He hardly blinked and agreed immediately. I was already calling him Dr. Angel for so many reasons after we transferred from home birth to hospital. And, I was in the position suddenly of explaining what the heck she was talking about - that I do - and he only had a few minutes. The video is not a great example of a therapy or completion process; but, it shows how even the best caregivers are automated in their care of baby at birth and it shows how babies WANT to do what they physiologically missed.
HOW I WORK
The video shows too how I work intuitively with the baby and how this informs the mother and father about how their baby communicates. Watch for when I get from the baby what she needs from the mother-father. It is what we did for hours in the labor at home that comforted her. You see the baby in the angst of her birth story, the doctor is just doing what doctors do now, “Up to mama” … but the baby - every baby - wants the mother to be his or her first touch, for the mother to receive her baby.
The Moment of Awe process was shown to me in 2001 by the four-month old baby whose mother shared her story at the top of this page. I had been working with babies for a year. He was not the first baby whose “voice” I could hear. The first one was in the womb.
The couple was working in therapy with a leader in the field of pre and perinatal psychology, and infant mental health, Michael Trout, in couple therapy, and he referred them to me. As a result, the mother and father understood who the baby is, and that he experienced his very traumatic birth - forceps AND vacuum extraction. And was that is what he is crying about. Both the mother and father had experienced being deeply heard by Mr. Trout.
After the first session working with the baby via craniosacral there was a huge shift. Someone came to the house and said, “He looks different” without knowing about the therapy. In the second meeting, the first session of a two-day intensive, which was, well, intense, I heard the baby’s voice telling me what he wanted. I went to the hotel and all night it was coming to me. The next day, even though it seemed weird to me, not where I would go, considering the trauma, I followed what he was telling me.
I was psychically connected to the baby and followed him which key aspect of craniosacral - following the body, but the baby was communicating to me in words! He showed me what I now call the “Moment of Awe” process. It is a process of having the physiologic experience that the baby needed and had a right to - from the baby’s perspective. The baby had not slept more than an hour in first four months of his life. That night he slept five hours. The mother’s sharing of her experience is at the top of this page.
As a result of this experience, I decided to cancel my plans to do a PhD in pre and perinatal psychology and instead do a two-year training in birth trauma healing with a founder in the field, Raymond Castellino. It was not until I was in the program that I realized he was teaching me the details and neuroscience of what the baby had showed me. As a craniosacral therapist, I called it “putting the muscle and skin on the bones.”
My book, “Listening to Babies” starts with this baby’s story and the first time I heard the baby in the womb, and shares my journey of coming into this gift. It is geared towards Grandmothers, midwives, and doulas who will be the ones supporting the mother and baby. I intend the book to teach Doulas how to listen to and support the baby after the birth - how to debrief and process from the perspective of the baby has a story to tell too.
Sadly, doulas repeatedly witness trauma and the book aims to teach them how to be present as a sacred witness and then therapeutically support the baby, mother, and father/other, grandmother.