Can You Hear Me Baby? is a theatrical presentation designed to raise awareness! When theater is humorous, thought provoking, personally touching and socially impactful it can inspire non-defensive communication and new understandings. Pregnancy and birth experiences are wrapped in family and social dynamics. This is true for parents and professionals. This theatrical presentation provides the opportunity for the audience to take a step back and experience some fundamentally different views around choices and outcomes while laughing and sometimes crying about this incredible journey we take to bring about the miracle of birth.
About the Stories and Songs
What is Can You Hear Me Baby?
educational true stories and songs
Can You Hear Me Baby? presents interweaving stories and original songs to dramatize the beauty, challenges, personal courage, losses, miracles, and profundity of birth. Each presentation is based upon true stories. The infusion of music provides the opportunity to feel transported into an intimate experience where one can self-reflect about one’s own personal story.
Hearing the stories of others can be inspiring, funny, heart-wrenching, empowering and also healing. Written by Lisa Rafel with music composed by Lisa Rafel and Gary Malkin, Can You Hear Me Baby? entertains, enlivens, awakens inner awareness and ignites greater connection to the miracle of birthing life.
Why I wrote Can You Hear Me Baby?
how someone is born can have life long implications
Lisa Rafel: I was 20 when my daughter was born 7 weeks early. My beautiful pregnancy and labor became a nightmare after I was given Pitocin and then I was anesthetized. I awoke disoriented. My daughter was in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for 3 ½ weeks. My doctor told me to go home and get rest while she got stronger. She came home not wanting to be held. I felt inadequate and rejected. Two years later, when I had a natural childbirth with my son, we immediately bonded through contact and breast-feeding. I instantly fell in love.
It should have been obvious. I was more relaxed with my son. There was a difference between his solid inner security and my daughter’s insecurity. It wasn’t until we were creating Safe In The Arms of Love that I realized my daughter and I had never bonded. I was heart-broken and reached out to her but 40 years had gone by. Reconnecting was going to take time.
I wanted to raise the issues of bonding and birth in a powerful way so that others might not suffer the way my daughter and I did. Using true stories and music can alert mothers to the importance of bonding. I am grateful for all the support I have received. Our audiences get to laugh and cry and then leave with more awareness that the choices made during conception, pregnancy, birth and post-birth can have a life long impact.
Our intention is to have this educational resource seen by the fullest spectrum of audiences. This includes underprivileged women and low-income pregnant women and their partners, middle and upper class parents, professionals, doctors and educators. We also give presentations to medical and hospital personnel as a catalyzing agent to encourage discussions about hospital practices and patient care.
The power of the “arts” is that one can, in unforgettable ways, experience stepping into the shoes of others while having a personally intimate and shared journey at the same time.
We have already seen the impact of both the Can You Hear Me Baby? content and the post-event talk back with the audience (which included health professionals). People expressed their delight with the play’s entertaining value and attendees were clearly interested in asking questions and presenting their views to the playwright, the consulting health professionals and the actors. The depth of direct questions about current birthing practices, the inquiry about local resources, the exploration of how to correct prior actions that had not been effective were critical pieces in the post play discussions and talkbacks. We know that 30-40-% of people experience birth as a trauma that leaves them feeling disempowered and wounded.
We are confident about the value and impact of Can You Hear Me Baby? We know it will engage learning and action among various communities and stimulate discussions between family members and professionals that can help to make the process of pregnancy and births more empowering and less traumatic.
Overview of the current birthing situation:
The current climate around birthing is changing. Empowered by parents and professionals alike, hospitals and doctors are now creating more “parent and baby friendly” environments. Discussions are increasing around the importance of uninterrupted skin-to-skin immediately after birth, the value of delayed umbilical cord cutting, the pros and cons of elective cesarean, and different ways to support bonding and attachment during delivery. The goal, of course, is to have healthy and safe long-term outcomes for mother and baby. However, there are many differing opinions as to how that can be accomplished.
Evidence based challenges:
More and more evidence-based challenges to common medical practices are being presented to show how the “medicalization of birthing” has yielded both positive and also some surprisingly counterproductive results for parents and child. The question begs to be asked, “How can vital, stimulating, healthy and necessary discussions between health professionals and parents be encouraged? How and when do we educate new and prospective parents so that they become aware that their environmental, emotional and physical choices around pregnancy and delivery may have life long emotional and physical impacts upon both they and their baby?”
Social impact:
One of the important issues we address is how a lack of bonding can impact the long-term health and well-being of the baby, the mother and even the father. This has a social impact on our society at large. Often the symptoms appear in children and adults as feelings of insecurity, low self-confidence, avoiding intimacy, difficulty trusting and accepting love, and feeling like something is missing. Until these symptoms are identified as a bonding issue, it’s difficult to know how to heal it.
Creative Team
LISA RAFEL
Writer/Composer/Lyricist
Lisa’s career spans from singing, actress, writer, poet, producer and starring in one-woman shows in Los Angeles and New York. She also gives workshops, concerts and key-note presentations about sound healing, Shamanism, and self-healing. In 2008, she co-convened and was a founding board member of the the Sound and Music Alliance (SAMA), which was created to foster the many uses of sound and music for healing. Fueled by her own personal revelation around the importance of bonding, she founded Resonant Sounds, LLC in 2010 to raise awareness and create products to support the health and well-being of parents and their babies. Lisa composed the songs and co-authored with Gary Malkin and her husband, psychologist David Surrenda, Ph.D. the award winning book/CD set, Safe In The Arms Of Love: Deepening The Essential Bond With Your Baby. Her clinically tested music has been studied in highly stressful Neo-Natal intensive Care Units (NICU). Lisa sits on the board of the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH).
www.lisarafel.com
GARY MALKIN
Composer/Lyricist
JAYNE ATKINSON
Original Director, Producer
DAVID SURRENDA, PhD
Executive Producer
www.Leadershipedge.org
RAYLENE PHILLIPS, MD, IBCLC, FABM, FAAP
Medical Consultant
Outcomes from seeing Can You Hear Me Baby?
- An entertaining and educational experience that can inspire a positive interest in the ideas presented.
- A genuine opportunity to reflect about the choices one has made or is planning to make around one’s own birthing experience.
- To stimulate rich and multi-leveled conversations around the issues, choices and future of birthing practices.
- A way to share best practice information with quality handouts to the audience members.
- A way to show why bonding and attachment and providing a healthy prenatal environment for their child is so important.
Are you a:
- Hospital System looking to support and educate your birthing community
- Birthing Community Organization who believes in finding ways to expose new mother’s to the importance of pre-planning and bonding
- Networker who loves connecting people to each other around common causes
- Parent who wants to help mothers to have better birthing experiences
- Like minded pro-bonding activist
- Philanthropist
- Theater investor
HOST a “Special Presentation” with a dynamic duo!
You can invite playwright, Lisa Rafel and health and music innovator/composer, Gary Malkin to present their “Keynote Performance,” for your organization or conference. Enjoy an outrageously inspiring evening of stories and live performances that includes excerpts of music and scenes tailored to your event.
These are some of the remarks following their presentation at the National Perinatal Association Conference in Houston, Texas where they received a standing ovation!“Fantastic!” “I laughed and I cried!” “It was informative and moving.” “I deeply appreciated the time for the audience discussion after the show.” “Funny and wildly entertaining yet so touching”!
The Presentation Includes
- Enlighten and stimulate introspection about what’s important to the Moms and Dads of the world.
- Bringing greater health awareness to the public through theater.
- Selected excerpts of scenes and songs tailored to your event.
- Experiencing how the power of theater can inspire and educate parents and professionals about Pregnancy, Birth and Choice.
- Time for introspection and conversation about the growing “medicalization of birth” and the choices women are making for how, when and where they give birth. Audience discussion is always included with the presentation.
LISA AND GARY – on the road!
Would you (or your organization) like to host a “Special Presentation” performance of Can You Hear Me Baby? Perfect for Medical and Birth Oriented Conferences, University, and other education venues, Lisa and Gary are comfortable in intimate and large settings. Our intention is to reach the fullest spectrum of audiences. Contact us with your ideas! Thank you!
Financial Support
Do you support charitable organizations? We hope you will consider us this year as a worthy cause. You will be supporting the development of the next staging of the play as well as our educational outreach work.
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