I'm just gonna hit record now just so I don't Forget. Yeah, that's fine. And let me put my computer on Do not disturb. I should do another Is the Do Meet you. You too. I've been following you for a while, so this is kind of fun. Yeah, yeah, you too. Like here and there. But you know when the bloody algorithm,

sometimes things never pop up. And then I was like, oh my gosh, I've missed so much of her stuff when you messaged me. I went back and I was like, oh yeah, here she is. Isn't that funny? Yeah. And even it happens with like my favorite people that I love following and I saw their account to like see their shit.

But you know, because they post, you know, probably some words that are flagged by Instagram. Yeah. Like they don't pop up. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So what I'm doing, these podcasts are actually gonna come out next week. So super fast turnaround. Exciting. Yes. I'm interviewing a couple other people who work with birth workers in some capacity just to kind of share that like a lot of new doulas have this thing in their head that it's like,

it's always a competition with the other doulas. And I almost wanna show them like, just like I'm walking the walk and not just talking the talk. Yeah. Of like, yeah. You know, I'm not scared to come and like ask people like how they help doulas and what they do. And so yeah, I'd really love to hear, like Nicole Joy told me,

told me she explained it this way, but it's like a business birth story. Like instead of sharing your birth story, sharing your birth story. Okay. So yeah, like how you even like heard what a doula was, how you started serving moms, how you pivoted and now also mentor doulas and then at the end like you know, what, what offers you have for moms and doulas and how people can work with you and maybe who your favorite type of clients are.

Yeah. Cool. Easy. Yeah. Sounds good. You can start wherever you wanna start. Just jump in. I'm really curious like, you know, when did you hear about the word doula for the first time? Or when did you like really start in birth work? Oh gosh. I'm one of those doulas who did not hear about doulas until after she had her own babies.

Amazing. So I remember the day actually, I was in a cafe with a girl friend who I had actually met on Instagram locally. And she pointed out this other woman that had walked in who was very, had a presence about her, let's say you'll know who I'm talking about when I say her name. And she was like, oh look, that's Angela Gallow.

I don't know if you know Angela Gallow. I do. Yeah. And I was like, who the fuck is Angela Gallow? And she's like, she's a doula, she's famous on Instagram. I was like, what the hell is a doula? And then she told me about it. And from then on then I started following an and yeah, that was my birth by fire,

if you like, into what a doula was. And this was after I'd had, after I'd had my second baby, just after I think we were there with our young children. And that's how I was introduced to the world of doulas through my friend from Instagram who showed me who Angela Ally was. I love that. And can I just say there are so many doulas who are like,

there's not enough clients, there's not enough clients, there's not enough people giving birth. And then I think to myself that like there are literary people giving out, giving birth right now who don't even know what a doula is yet. Exactly. The room that we have to expand this, this community of birth work. It's insane. It's insane. Yeah,

it's, yeah, it's wild. Yeah, it's huge. And from there, so my son would've been a newborn because I, my career to that point was completely different. I'd spent 10 years in the humanitarian aid industry, so I was an aid worker doing a lot of travel and policy work and so forth. My background's in human rights law and I was on maternity leave and was thinking about what it would look like to go back to work with two children to that type of job.

And I just had opened myself up mentally and emotionally to what I, I total career change might look like. And you know, when you just plant that thought in your head and you don't even tell anyone. And then the universe goes, ding, ding, dinging, ding. And so I had opened myself up to a new possibility and heard rumors of a restructure at my organization.

And sure enough I got a phone call one day saying, can you come in for a meeting? And I was like, yes. And I went in and I saw the white envelope on the table and I was like, that better be a redundancy package so that I can go and become a doula. And it was, and literally the following day I signed up for Angela's doula training that she was doing in my city.

We lived in the same city at the time and the rest is history as they say. So from there I did her training, which was a week long intensive in person. And then I also had an online component. And one week before my son turned one is when I attended my first birth. Wow. So, and he was seven months at the training.

He was the only baby there. And so yeah, it was, it just happened, it just unfolded. It just, I didn't even really make much of a decision at all. Just, yeah. That was the Birth from that very first, like the very first entrance to birth work. Did you already say, wow, I wanna bring my background in like advocacy and legal work into this work?

Yeah, yeah I did because you know, I, you know, once you have your own birth and people start telling you theirs and I was like, what the fuck is going on here? What, like what's happening to women and people birthing here is illegal like this, some of this stuff is illegal. What is going on? Why? Why is no one saying no?

Why is no one, one having conversations? Why is no one aware of what they can and can't, you know, speech box, egg quotes, do what's going on? Like why are so many people in my circles having these really challenging births in hospitals? And so, yeah, I knew right away and that's why I was also attracted to Angela Gallo because she did a lot of work in activism in the birth space.

And so I, you know, I looked at 10 other trainings and was like to vanilla to vanilla too. Like no, that's very pasty. I need something with fire in it. Something that's actually gonna make a difference. Not just handholding and that sort of thing. And, and so straight away and was up that alley. So yeah, I knew right away that the two would come together really nicely and they have,

which has been really great. I don't think I could have survived in this work if I didn't have that aspect. Yeah. Of activism. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like, you know, doula burnout comes in many different forms and I actually think for the majority of doulas it's, they don't even find their first clients. Like they, they burn out cause they like don't even,

they struggle and struggle to even find clients. But then there are other people who do find clients and the burnout comes more in the form of like witnessing trauma over and over and over and over again. Which are two very completely different problems, but both like very prevalent in birth work. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So did you start off by,

you know, doing the typical doula stuff or attending births in person at home, at the hospital, all of that? Yeah, most of my first, first births were at hospital and my first few clients really was word of mouth. And I had put a website up and started an Instagram, but my first three really were all word of mouth and just people being like,

oh yeah, I know someone and da da da. And they got in touch with me sort of thing. But yes, mostly hospital. And then my very first home birth, I'm actually about to attend her second home birth in the next couple of months, which is exciting. I'm, yeah, that was an incredible experience to have the comparison between the two and just to be blown away by what you know,

much more undisturbed birth is like. And then it highlighted even more so the problems that we have in facility based childbirth. Yeah. Yeah. How Did you, how, tell me about the process of starting to incorporate that advocacy stuff. Because when you're starting out as a doula, sometimes you know, you don't know what you don't know yet and you gotta witness some shit to realize,

oh yeah, like this needs to change. So I'd love to hear just how you started incorporating the advocacy. Yeah, right from the beginning. So, you know, if you know me, which you have for a while, you will know that from the beginning I started saying some pretty outlandish shit. So you know, if you scroll right back to the early days of my Instagram,

I've always from the beginning had a fire in my belly, even as a young child about different things. My parents cut down a tree in the front yard when I was like, what would I be 14 or something And I lost it. Like that's a tree, it's a living thing, you know? So I've always had that and it was just always gonna come out.

So I think if it's in you, it's just gonna be in you and it's gonna come out. You don't have to wait for an opportunity. Like there's always something to advocate on. And so, but it really became even more so during, you know, I don't know if you're familiar much what I'm, I live in Melbourne in Australia or south of Melbourne,

but we had the harshest lockdowns in the world during Covid we had 200 and something days of yeah, stage four lockdown, which was like not at all leaving your house. Like it was the worst in the world. And during that time there were a lot of restrictions on people birthing in hospitals. And that was really when, I mean this is what,

two and a half years ago now, and I've been a doula flight four years, so you know, a year and a bit in lockdowns hit. And so I started doing a lot of work trying to get people into hospitals and that was, you know, one-on-one with my own clients applying for exemptions and all that kind of thing. But it was also,

you know, so many people would contact me online and be like, I'm trying to get, you know, my, I'm having a cesarean and they won't let my partner in. Like what can I do? And all this like fielding all these issues and toward the end of the lockdowns what was still happening was if you were having birth and theater, whether that was an instrumental birth or a surgical birth,

you were on your own and that's not right. And so the whole time I was following the W H O recommendations and what different human rights bodies were saying about what was going on, including in Australia we have a couple of bodies that were, you know, providing some advice. And I was following all of that with what was developing and evolving over the time.

And what was happening wasn't right. What was happening in our city was not in alignment with what was being recommended. And so I tried as much as I could to bring that in. So it's one thing just to be like, I know this isn't right, but why? Like you have to go that extra mile and be like, what is there,

like I know in my gut this is wrong, I know in my mind this is wrong, but what else is there that says this is wrong. That's not just me gonna be jumping up and down going, this isn't right. You know, and that's where the law comes in and where different recommendations from other bodies come in. And so I tried to gather as much of that information as I could to back up my case every single time.

And it worked. So the, our local hospital ended up changing their policy literally overnight because I was on the phone to the CEO at like eight o'clock on a Saturday night trying to get in to see a client. I was like, just emailing, emailing like you need to let me in, she's in distress. And eventually they did and the following day the policy changed and you know,

the midwives who I'm friends with there were like, it changed like literally after you did that thing. So we know that having that kind of conversation with the right decision makers and not just blurting it out on Instagram cuz CEOs of hospitals do not follow you on Instagram, like flash unfortunately news. And so you have to go to the decision makers, right?

And so once you get that, that's where change can happen as well. So that was great that that that that that that that, my next word isn't coming. That that change happened. Yeah. So yeah, it's always been part of my work that activism and then, you know, obviously there's the one-on-one aspect with clients, but there is joining local advocacy groups and national advocacy groups doing work for consumers and people interacting with the system.

How can you make this a sustainable job if a lot of the activism is actually happening just through your own greater will, just through your, your humanity and being a good human. You're not, and a lot of times you're not technically getting paid for that advocacy work you're doing. So how is that sustainable for somebody? Yeah, it's, I think there's a couple of aspects.

Yeah. I have to remember, we all have to remember that it's a long game. It's like a long plane. And so when you first come into it and you're all fired up and every single birth pisses you warf and every like, I mean aspects of how a person is treated, not like the birth in general, like you're probably in the wrong job if you're being pissed off by a birth.

But it's really easy in the beginning to feel like you're hitting your head against a brick wall and to have that rage inside of you that's going nowhere. And I think that's what can lead to burnout as well. So remembering that, that it is a long play. Like this change is not gonna happen overnight. It could, but it's not going to,

it's, it's a generational change. So when you think about, you know, I don't know if in America you're familiar with people like Ria Dempsey and Jane Hardwick colleagues, they talk a lot about what's happened in previous decades to get us to where we are now. Like what is the red thread of birth? And when we look at all of that significant change does happen over generations,

but it is over generations. It's not in a day, it's not in a month, it's not in a year. It's generational change and it involves cultural change as well. It's not just about what's happening at a hospital or with midwives privately or anything like that. It's cultural change as well. And that systemic change tends to follow the cultural change. So they have to go together.

So everything we're doing to address the issues in birth work is multifaceted. So I think remembering that helps it to be more sustainable. And I think the second part is on more of an energetic level, dropping the maiden energy around it. So like the, the maiden energy around those issues is very hectic. It's very all over the place. It's high in rage.

It's like, you know what I mean? It's like really intense. It's like what you said, like you're just posting on Instagram mad at the world. Yeah. Like that's exactly amazing energy. It's not thought out. Yeah. Yeah. So I think when you embrace more of the mother and Crohn energy, when you enter those phases, if you,

if you do have children and you don't even have to have children to enter those phases, right? That energy is very different. And I think that's the energy that we need to bring to the change is more of that solid, grounded inner knowing, deep knowing interconnectedness. That's what will bring it forward as well as all the actions that we do, the Activity.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Do you feel, how much do you feel that your past with advocacy and law was the reason that this hospital changed their policy? And I'm asking because I feel like a new doula would hear your story and be like, oh, okay, Carly did it because she had that history. I don't have that. So how,

how am I supposed to make a change? Yeah. Well they didn't know that I had that. So it's not like they were like, oh, she sits on the board of this law organization or anything, so we better listen to what she's saying. Like it was more just the way that I framed everything. And again, it was that non made an energy of how I approached it.

So yes, I was persistent, but I was very tactical in my words. I was diplomatic. I wasn't calling them out in a way that they would just put a wall up. So you have to be political about it as much as it sucks in some ways, you Know? Yeah. You gotta play the game. Yeah, Yeah. You have to play the game.

And so when you approach it from that way, I don't think it matters what your background is. As long as you come at it from that grounded place with the right information that you know for sure is true and applies, then it doesn't matter. You could've, you could've never had a job in your whole life and come to it from that and they would never know.

It doesn't matter. Yeah. I say the same thing when I help doulas support women in like the birth room and in maybe a, a tense situation in a hospital birth, the exact same thing, like can the doula remain nont triggered? Can the doula not bring that on, that reaction in that baggage? Cuz with a doulas triggered, that's when a lot of times the,

the provider puts up that wall and says, you know, I'm not listening to you or get out sometimes even. Yeah. Yeah. She, so yeah, the, the, the one with the calm mind tends to have a lot more of the power in that room. Mm, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So are you doing work with doulas now to help them advocate for their clients?

I am. And that, yeah, I guess also came out of the last couple of years with just people coming to me for different advice around all of what we just talked about. Yeah. So I started doing, oh, it would've been a year ago this time a year ago. I started sort of doing a series of masterclass on different topics,

for example, human rights in childbirth and you know, doing particular things with clients at different times in the journey and this sort of thing. And, and that series I guess rolled into what I ended up creating, which was the hospital birth course late last year, which I released in November, which at the time of Black Saturday sales, which was terrible timing,

black, black Friday, sorry, not realizing that was on. Anyway, so that's a whole nother story. But yeah, I, I am working with doulas. So that was one aspect because, well that particular course can be accessed by anybody and it's useful for everybody. But then in the, just before that last year I started, I launched a mentorship called Power,

power Mentorship for Birth workers, which is into, what month are we in? We're in our fourth month of six and I'll probably do it again at the end of this, another cohort, but which was really addressing like both business and birth for doulas so, and birth workers. Yeah. So it's really looking at, yeah, what power dynamics are.

It is about addressing change in the system, but also about sustainable business and debriefing births and all that. It's like a six month little solid spot to do all of that in. So that's when I more heavily started working with other doulas and birth workers in more of a mentorship capacity rather than just kind of advice here and there and collaboration and that kind of thing,

which had been happening for a long time. This was my first little formal entry into Yeah. That world. Yeah. Yeah. And my journey sounds a lot like yours where it's just, I kept creating and people kept asking questions and I would just create based on what the people wanted and eventually it like kind of transitioned and like this, this beautiful,

you know, mentorship program came about because that's what really, yeah, that's, maybe that's what's been lacking as birth work has been going online and maybe especially through covid we're lacking that like mentorship relationship, especially with our trainers. Yeah. Like when I did my doula training program, Angela sounds amazing. Mine was two days in person, maybe three days,

but the third day was, you know, just like chit chat, let's go get lunch together. Yeah. Yeah. And as I was making, so I made like a comprehensive like full doula training program. It's like six months with mentorship and like pre-recorded videos. And I remember when I made that, I was like, oh, let me just make it like three months.

And as I actually started making it, I'm like, three months isn't enough, It's not enough. Yeah. No. How is two days enough? How is three days enough? Yeah. When three months is not enough and even six months it's like, you know, they get to the end of the program and they're like, wait a second, like I wanna keep going.

Yeah. Because yeah, it's, it's birth work starts with life work, you know, it starts with that self mastery and understanding your own triggers and biases and how you show up in the world. And then there's so much that goes on top of it, right? Like the birth theory and the practical stuff. And then beyond that of course like the business.

So I just love that you're combining all of that. You don't self work, the trigger work, the advocacy, also birth debriefs and business. Yeah. Like this is what we put in the birth community. Yeah. And it's hard because so many trainings, you know, you cut, you know, doulas come out of and think that they have everything they need,

but we don't, like we don't, I mean mine was much more comprehensive than others, but certainly, you know, even I came out and still was like, okay, I just need someone to like hold my hand for a little while because this is full on. So even my own, I had a business mentor last year and that was, ended up being 12 months and even that was like heartbreaking when we stopped because I was like,

I don't know if I can go on without you. I mean I can, but you know, it's still that feeling of like, is it ever enough? Like it needs to be Yeah. More than we think it does. Yeah. There's a lot, there's a lot of benefit to just having someone to bounce ideas off of. Yeah. Whether it's like remodeling your home,

giving birth, becoming a doula, like whatever it is, it's just, yeah. And not necessarily out of a place of like needing that validation from someone else. Yeah. But just like, yeah, bouncing your ideas off to make sure you're headed in the right direction. Yeah. Well we work on our own, right? Like when we have,

you know, I remember in my previous jobs I always had a team, I always had a manager, lots of people to bounce ideas around with and we don't have that when we're working on our own. So really it's just employing a teammate I feel like, in a lot of ways. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So, okay, tell us where to find you and actually we didn't even introduce you at the beginning,

so tell us who you're where to find you and how someone can reach out if they're interested in any of your programs. Yeah, thanks. So, hi, I'm Carly. Yeah, so I'm a birth worker based in Melbourne, Australia, just south of Melbourne. And you can find me on instagram@atcarlysmith.com. And it's Carly k a rl i smith.com. Not com doula.

What am I saying? That's my website. Okay, I'll start again. You can edit that out. Perfect. So you can find me on Instagram at at carly smith dot doula, which is Carly, k a r l i. And then my website is www.carlysmith.com and those are the two places you can find me. You can contact me on either place and I will see it.

And right now I have going, yeah, the hospital birth course, which for birth workers, I'm happy to extend this offer to anyone listening is it is Australian based. So if you're in Australia and you're listening, then this is a hundred percent for you. But if you are in America or another country, it is also very applicable to you. So have a look at it and see what you think.

But the hospital birth course is really designed for anyone who's birthing in a hospital to birth in a hospital to know exactly what they're up against and up for and it's a full rundown of everything. So I'm really proud of it and it's everything I talk about with my clients as well. It's like six or eight hours worth of content plus other bits and pieces.

So yeah, you can jump on there and have a look at at it. But for birth workers, the offer is that when you purchase it, I will give you a code for your clients to purchase it at 50% off so you don't have to, there's stuff in there for you cuz there is a birth worker addition with like an advocacy class and a whole range of stuff.

But for the regular person birthing in a hospital, they can have it for a hundred dollars when you have that code. So it's very handy. I give it to my clients all the time as a gift because I'm like, here's six hours of content we don't have to do. We can do way more fun things in person than talk about these things.

So it's great. That's what I have going at the moment. And then at the end of this power mentorship round, I will probably do another cohort beginning in April. So if you want to learn more about that, you can, as they say, slide into the dms and we can chat about it. Amazing. And I'll put the links to all of that in the So notes.

Yeah, so if you're listening, go to the show notes, follow her on Instagram, I'll put the links for the hospital birth course and then just your website in there too. Yeah. Awesome. Amazing. Thank you so much. I actually have so many students from Australia and I feel like they're gonna just jump on that, especially the Hospital birth course.

Cool. Yeah, A hundred percent. Yeah. Thank you so much for giving us your time again. So have Come out next week so I know why normally it's like four months. Normally I like forget about the people or they, And they're like, so podcast gonna Come. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, soon. Love it. Yeah. I love everything you do.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's really cool to see just like the actual like tangible impact that I know I'm making and I know you're making. Yeah, yeah. Cool. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna screenshot us so we can share it. Is that all right? Are you like revealing that you are like cute to people?

There you go. I love it. I absolutely love it. Yeah. Okay, Cool. Okay, cool. I'll tag you next week or I'll like shoot you a DM with maybe like a picture or something. Yeah, easy. Cool. Yay. Thanks Kyleigh. Have a good day. You too. You too. See ya.