Gather Interviews Carey Glenn, Co-Producer of These Are My Hours and Midwife in Upstate South Carolina
Carey Glenn: CPM, LM
Carey Glenn is a Licensed and Certified Professional Midwife with Rooted Birth Midwifery, co-producer of These Are My Hours documentary, as well as a musician and co-director of Sacred Heart Beats, serving the families and community of Upstate South Carolina. She has been in birth work for a little over a decade, and has a beautiful blended family of her own! Fun fact: she gave birth at The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee - an absolute dream for many fellow birthworkers! Carey has such a wealth of wisdom and experience that she brings forth through her generous support and educational offerings, all of which rooted in a trauma-informed and family-centered care approach.
Tell us about your journey as a midwife. How did you get started?
I practice as a midwife, have worked as a consultant and producer for the birth documentary These Are My Hours. I am the co-creator of These Are My Hours Birth and Postpartum Educator and Trauma-Informed Doula certification program, and also the co-creator of the therapeutic drumming organization Sacred Heart Beats.
I first interacted with the medical system with a major injury at 21 that left me frustrated and unsatisfied with my options for healing. I began learning about alternative therapies and systems of understanding the body as well as approaches to medicine as a concept. I chose a homebirth midwife for my first labor and birth a few years later; when my birth ended in a traumatic cesarean and the next years were spent learning the ropes of my mothering, I was without any inclination to become a birth worker. My second birth led me to the Farm and a better birth, but still a transport and cesarean after an attempted VBAC.
Many peers encouraged me to pursue birth work as it was clearly a passion— I’d read 30+ books in pregnancy and the same each postpartum! Nutrition, babies, nursing, labor, herbs, etc. Texts, books for parents, then professional journals. Frankly, I was insecure that I hadn’t pushed my babies out, so I steered away from midwifery altogether. I looked first to massage school or naturopathy as professional paths. I felt like the humble goal was overall to enter into the general realm of healing; the job was finding a practical inroad. My geography and finances, the lack of available internet at the time, all dictated that I continue considering my options… Eventually, I began lay counseling in lactation, first peers and friends, then their connections, and I then trained as a La Leche League Leader. Then, I reached out and started a correspondence educational program to become a midwife on a lark. Before I completed the LLL training one of my friends connected me to a local midwife who called out of the blue and offered me an apprenticeship. That boosted my confidence, and I interviewed at another birth center with a team that fit well with my needs at the time. I was accepted into their practice and trained there for 2 years before taking the NARM exam and then licensing in my state.
I practiced as an LM for 4 years, then in a PMA, taking births only sporadically during a lot of family shifts and also creating Sacred Heart Beats with my new partner. In 2019 I obtained my CPM as an experienced midwife and relicensed, practicing with Emily Graham in Rooted Birth Collective.
In 2018 she and I became the sole remaining producers (and she the majority owner) of the film, These Are My Hours, in which we starred as subjects. The film is a poetic portrayal of one woman’s journey of labor and birth; with no commentary or experts, a beautiful musical score and cinematography. In 2018-19 we traveled the country screening the film in academic and community settings, listening to folks in those places and others around the world who were touched by the film. With no prior experience in the film industry and stiff rejection from the documentary circuit, we were tasked with finding a sustainable method of distribution. After much integration of personal and professional experience, including birth trauma, we created our educator+doula program that premiered in January in order to assist in circulation efforts.
What are some of the roadblocks you faced prior to getting to this point in your career?
Right now it feels like I was my own primary roadblock whenever it’s felt there was one!
Balancing home and work life (and not pushing myself to exhaustion in either area) was a long learning process.
I once had a hard time asking for and accepting help or delegating/trusting and struggled to work in partnership or collective. I didn’t know how to take care of myself well as an adult, emotionally and psychologically, when I first became a midwife and a lot had to change there.
I’ve experienced the effects of complex trauma in my personal and professional lives that altered the integrity of my nervous system. I’d never felt like I failed at anything before *having* to take a hard break from birth work while I cared for an elderly couple full time. Ultimately, some of the best visions for restructuring my life were born of that time. It was a gift.
But a lot of curiosity and stories spun out in a local circle; being the subject of gossip was a temporary impediment to healing in my spirit. I had to forgive myself and give space, acceptance, for others feelings about me, even if they weren’t based in facts or with my perspective considered.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to get started as a midwife, but doesn't know where to begin?: Find a mentor. Have conversations with them in person. Listen to birthing people. Learn principles of trauma stewardship and realistically assess where you feel best serving birthing folks. Work through your own trauma and your biases before stepping into the work.
What's something you're most proud of professionally?
The WHOLE These Are My Hours educator and doula course!! Emily’s infographics are the best.
When I was an apprentice I read and followed Dr. Rixa Freeze’s blog and dissertation and was almost OUT of midwifery because my heartfelt freebirth was so wonderful that I wasn’t sure of what I was even doing planning to be an attendant. I asked her to sew my first sling for weighing babies when I went into practice (her first too!). Many years after that, one of the early trips for the film was to Wabash College under Rixa’s invitation and sponsorship to speak in a general setting and to one of her classes. Emily loves and respects her work too, so we were both elated to share space around campus and town, talk birth, and build a relationship with her.
Dr. Sarah Buckley screened the film with us in Charlotte, NC. Her work is beloved to me and so many and a critical aspect of birth physiology in my didactic education, along with how we behave around each other as birthing mammals… In her first moments of response, she said the film was remarkable, important, historic and beautiful and that it will be so helpful to birthing people. And then she thanked me for my unobtrusive presence and said I was a good midwife.
What's the most valuable advice you've ever received, either professionally or personally?
My folks taught me informed consent in the medical system and what it is to conscientiously object from an early age. They also advised against too much attachment in the heart to a profession’s politics over time.
My mom was a teacher who often said that when she shut the door to her classroom all that noise had to go away in favor of thinking and feeling for each child or else she wouldn’t be fully there for them. There wasn’t room. She was involved in policy, administration, and change, but not attached.
My dad says “Experience is a fine teacher. And a fool knows no other.” He also taught me intuition in the gut and senses as a fact and gift to trust and use.
My preceptors were humbly able to assess risk, including their own additions of energy, with detachment, while still being completely faithful in the person and process. And taught me “not to pray for patience or you’ll surely learn it!”
Both my parents and preceptors advised me to inhabit a space of gratitude as often as possible. Mindfully, continuously. But not in ignorance… by the act of choice in order to keep going in trying circumstances. My dad says “it’s a gift to believe anything you want. And to be able to change it.”
My midwife at the farm, Sharon, said to me with great measure after my second birth “when a baby doesn’t come down there’s always a reason”, and then once when I called her for processing a birth after being a midwife myself. I unpack more and more from that statement every time I say or hear it. Her care cemented the understanding, the knowing, in me that trauma is not created by the event itself but by the way one is treated during after it along with whether there is agency, support, expression, and embodiment after the experience.
My first mentor, Karen Holt, a Montessori program creator, taught me to meditate and to be aware of my consciousness from childhood, and to observe things as a naturalist, with curiosity first. She also taught me to give to my community with my heart and mind, and to listen deeply to individual stories while trying to see the big picture. She showed me what it means to hold space and to hold the ground or a vision, the pattern for conflict resolution, and the value of ceremony.
My parents, preceptors, midwives, and Karen all gave a great inheritance of humility, faith in the good design of physiology and the healing desire and potential of our bodies and the earth itself.
I also love this “tend your thoughts well when alone and your words well when with people.”
What's something about this work that shocked you the most, that you wish you'd known before you got started?
I continue to be surprised when providers speak in judgment of each other with limited perspective and that overall the field itself and conversation around birth can lack nuance or much room for each other and what we don’t know; humility.
What are your thoughts on life-work balance as a birth worker? Is it achievable?
I’ve worked with apprentices, alone, in partnership, and now as a collective. Balance for me at this stage in life as a birth worker requires a trusted partner, collaboration and connection, community, and the practical intentions to take two long breaks off of call each year, set boundaries in scheduling, and plan and structure resources for helpers. Having a partner who is secure and solid at home in my absence during births and a healing presence when I return affords me emotional space to give in a healthy way to clients.
What is missing in your local birth community? What's a need that isn't being met yet?
Non-stigmatized parenting education, more in-person conversations around trauma and postpartum support in challenging circumstances, more conversations on the inherent biases of medical providers, more emphasis overall on education instead of so much focus on the role of support people, more connection and trust between birth workers instead of cliques, more conversations around births for local populations that experience oppression or are marginalized in our systems
What advice do you have for someone who wants to have a positive and empowered birth experience?
Find the voice of your body and speak in harmony with it. Become aware of your psoas; listen deeply. Walk. Dance. Sing. Wear comfortable things. Stretch. Drink. Talk to the baby.
Write about your parents and parenting, discipline. The mother wound and the father wound. What are your beliefs on the roles you face as you’ve seen them exercised and as society dictates them? Consider how you feel about them and express it. A journal entry, a poem, an essay, a song, a painting. It doesn’t matter. Express it. We all have conflicts here. Meditate on your feelings on sex and your body, how you feel about being seen, how that all may shift, and give your body a voice.
Practice exercising boundaries, verbally and/or mentally/psychically. The selfishness of the world is on display when you’re pregnant, but you aren’t required to interact with it all the time.
Practice accepting yourself. Touch your body as it changes with love.
Watch These Are My Hours and mammalian births. Dance and become aware of your states of consciousness. Focus on how you will feel when you’ve birthed as you desire and continue imagining from there as you wish. Believe in the power of your imagination.
Recognize limitations if they exist in your chosen birth setting or with those in planned attendance, and consider your options for addressing those with detachment, not fear. If having a birth where trusting the environment is a struggle, read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
What are some of your favorite birth accounts/blogs/podcasts/etc right now?
@indiebirth @lesleyeverest @rashaundalugrand @healingbirth @themother.themoon
What are three things you can't live without lately?
Coffee
Singing, dancing
Drumming
What's next for you/your business?
Sacred Heart Beats (my partner Scott and I) are in the studio making a collection of labor and birth inspired percussion tracks to be released this summer.
While practicing at home in SC in Rooted Birth Collective, Emily and I plan to continue promoting These Are My Hours Birth and Postpartum Educator and Trauma Informed Doula certification course and also to release new short courses (including direct to consumers!) from These Are My Hours’ podia platform. We will continue to host and appear at more film screenings+speaking events, and are holding (local to us) community birth circles for storytelling and expressive arts opportunities in pregnancy and postpartum.
Thank you so much, Carey! We loved learning a bit more about you, and we are so excited to see what comes next!
The amazing film, which our whole team loves, is available for purchase via download or DVD or rental through the website, thesearemyhours.com, which will route folks to the Vimeo or Amazon platforms. There are also screening licenses for small businesses available for educators who want to use the film in classes for parents. There are no talking heads or expert commentary; it's just labor, birth, and postpartum (52 minutes, edited) with a poetic and percussive soundscape to accompany the amazing glimpse into undisturbed, physiologic human birth. Check it out! Also, the course can be found at www.thesearemyhours.podia.com!
