From My Side of the Change Table - Kelly Carrington

11/27/2020

From My Side of the Change Table
Kelly Carrington

This episode was sponsored by:

Please donate HERE

We are a 501 3c Non-Profit. Our aim is to prevent and heal birth trauma through education. Women need to understand their options and rights in childbirth so that they can have a safe and healthy birth.

In today’s episode, we talk with Kelly Carrington (evolutionmassage.ca), RMT for 19 years and male doula for the last 7 years.

We start our discussion with Kelly sharing how he became a male doula. We discuss the unique experiences and perspectives of a male birth worker. Kelly talks more about what he does as a doula and as a pre-natal educator. He shares his perspective about what is going well in birth procedures and birth education, as well as what he thinks could improve.

We talk more about his methods and what he tells his clients through the whole pregnancy and birth process. We talk about birth as a transitional experience, and Kelly shares his perspectives on that. We talk about women feeling like they’re not enough — how that can be amplified through the birth experience, and what we as a society do to perpetuate that. Kelly tells what he does to help reverse that for mothers.

We talk about birth plans, and how any birth where the baby and mother are healthy, not traumatized, made informed decisions, and are prepared for the postpartum period, is a fully successful birth.

Kelly talks about his services for postpartum mothers. We discuss how doulas can help new mother’s process their birth. We talk about setting boundaries between doulas and clients. We talk more about what male doulas can add to the birth industry and doula community.

• 1:08 Life As a Male Doula
• 14:55 Kelly’s Methods
• 32:19 Birth as a Transition
• 47:54 There’s Room For More Male Doulas

http://evolutionmassage.ca/

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Podcasts are sponsored in part by Empowering Fearless Birth
donate@empoweringfearlessbirth.com

The field of independent birth work is one that has slowly been drawing birth back into the hands of women from out of the often still male-led field of Obstetrics and Gynecology. While it's an important move for women to take charge of the birth world again with their unique understanding of their bodies and experiences, it can sometimes be just as valuable for male independent birth workers to gain the same sort of female-led education and understanding so that birth can be shaped from all sides and the perspective of birthing mothers can be understood by practitioners regardless of gender.

Sarah and Kelly discuss his work as a doula and how he feels his gender does and doesn't affect it. They also dig into Kelly's frustration with some of the ways that birthing mothers are treated in the current system and what he sees as obvious changes that should be made to give more dignity and empowerment to the process of birth.

Mr. Kelly Carrington is a husband to his high school physics partner, father to three manimals, RMT for 19 years and mandoula for the last 7 years.  He lives by the lake out in the middle of nowhere where he spends as much time with his family, gardens in his greenhouse, makes things out of wood and loves sleeping in a tent and being in a canoe.  

This episode was sponsored by:

Please donate HERE

We are a 501 3c Non-Profit. Our aim is to prevent and heal birth trauma through education. Women need to understand their options and rights in childbirth so that they can have a safe and healthy birth.