Honest Christian Conversations
A weekly podcast dealing with cultural and spiritual issues within the Christian faith.
Honest Christian Conversations
What to Expect (From Your Midwife) When You're Expecting
Giving birth is HARD! Don’t go it alone! In this episode, Gloria Hines takes you on an extraordinary journey through her work as a Christian midwife, revealing how spiritual transformation occurs in the birthing room.
Gloria's Website: https://glorybirth.com/
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Hello everyone, welcome back to Honest Christian Conversations. I'm your host, anna Murby. My guest is Gloria Hines. She is a midwife, so if you aren't familiar with that, she will explain what that is. I know I didn't know what it was until we talked. This is not just a conversation for women, so men don't tune out now and say, oh well, I guess I'm not watching this. You will. You have to watch, you have to listen. You're part of the whole birthing process as well, because it's your child too.
Speaker 1:This is going to be a very encouraging conversation. Her story of how she got into it is beautiful. The story of her testimony is amazing and beautiful. Her childhood is very interesting. You're going to love hearing about that. I will say that, with the whole talking about birthing, I know that comes with some issues for some women who have had births or perhaps miscarriages. So if that is you and this is a subject you aren't ready to broach, I understand. Maybe come back to it another time. Trust me, you are at some point going to want to hear this, because her love for Jesus and for the women she ministers to through her midwifery is very encouraging. And I can't stress enough that, even though she shares a couple stories, one of which is a little sad to hear. God gets the glory in the end, and you're going to want to hear what she has to say. So, without further ado, let's listen to Gloria's story Before the episode starts. Make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode.
Speaker 1:Hello, gloria, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I am very excited to talk to you because I have never needed to use a midwife before for my five kids, because I have had five C-sections and obviously there was no real need for that. I do have a lot of friends who they're either they've had them or they're becoming a doula. I don't know if that's quite the same thing, but it was very interesting to hear that you are one and on top of that you are a believer in Christ, which I don't hear that too often, but I feel like that's like an integral part of it, or should be anyways, because we are made in the image of God and it's important to remember that he knew us before we were born. He knit us together in the womb, as the verse says up there.
Speaker 1:But I just I was really excited to talk to you from a biblical perspective. I mean, I'm not I'm not expecting to go into this topic, but if you do want to jump into this very controversial one about abortion, it's very important to have Christ in the center of pregnancy. I'm very curious to get into all of that with you. But before we do that, tell us your testimony. How did you become the person you are today? Were you always a Christian? Is this something that happened throughout your life? How did it happen and how did it bring you into the line of work you have?
Speaker 2:Hi Anna, first of all, I'm just so excited to be here. I have just heard so much authenticity and sincerity in your previous podcasts and even the fact that you prayed with me before the podcast started just shows the reality of your relationship with the Lord, and so I feel very honored to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, you'd think that midwifery would be a whole lot more tied into believers, and I kind of live in a bubble here in Kansas City where there's a lot of Christian and believing midwives, but in a lot of other places it's very new agey. It's very, because I think it's still the way that midwifery is. If you watch it unfold from a physiological perspective and without interfering, you see how deeply spiritual it is. And so if someone isn't ready to enter into how the Lord made it and kind of ready to come into surrender and submission to Christ, then they're going to go a different route with it and you're going to go very new agey with it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, to answer your question about my testimony, no, I wasn't just born a Christian, but I did grow up in a deeply believing spiritual family. Yeah, I have so much to owe to my parents for leading us to Christ really well, from a young age I was not ashamed of the gospel. We grew up kind of in a bad neighborhood, as some would say, you know, and we were taking in homeless and drug addicts and all of that, like a lot of them would live with us and we would try to help restore them. Yeah, a little bit sketchy, since there's 11 girls living in this home 11 girls.
Speaker 1:Wow, I did not see that coming. That is crazy. I have three daughters and I'm like God. What did you do? I wanted six boys. What is this? I commend your parents. My hat is off to them. That is, that is awesome, really spectacular people.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine I mean being around kids now is so funny, like I absolutely adore kids, but I'm like there is a threshold of like how much talking from a kid I can take. I can't imagine 11 girls who are great at communication nonstop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I cannot imagine how was that for you living in that kind of environment, because I kind of get it a little bit. Not that my parents invited people to live with us that way, but I remember a couple times as a mid-teenager I don't know how old I was, maybe 16, 17, we came across a homeless person, a young guy, and my stepdad let him stay the night in a different part of our house, because at that time we were living in a preschool building for my grandpa's church, because we were keeping it safe and we were renovating it or something, so that's where we lived. So there was an extra area where someone could stay and we had him stay the night there and my stepdad gave him all the blankets that we could, and by morning the guy had taken off with all of it, including one of my favorite blankets that I had gotten from one of my other grandparents.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I was not the nicest person the next morning. It did not fill me with joy to see that at least he was warm and he had blankets Like that was my stepdad's point of view, and I was like, no, no, but you know, you're a teenager. How did you handle living in that situation? You already had your big family and on top of that there's new people coming in and you don't know them. You don't know what's going on. Your parents didn't know what they could be capable of. How did that make you feel at that point?
Speaker 2:You know, it's so funny because I, when children's brains are being formed, they can be acclimated to believe that anything is normal, and so it. To me it was like this is normal and I really thought every believer did this. I thought every believer took in people because my parents would just say, well, we're a light in the darkness, of course we're going to take in people, and so it was just normal. I kind of felt like we did it more than most people because it's like you know extended family members. I didn't really see them taking in people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, raise your hand. If you've done this before, ladies and gentlemen, write, write a comment or something and let us know if you, if she's not alone, or if this is a very unique situation, cause I have. I have not heard of anyone really doing that other than missionaries overseas, but that's awesome. I love that they had that perspective that we're the light in the darkness. Of course we're going to do this. A lot of people don't take the Bible at its word sometimes with certain things, and maybe we should. I mean, obviously, if you are lusting, you don't need to pluck your eye out. That might be an exception, but it's like there's certain things. We're supposed to be there for the needy and to be the hands and feet of Jesus.
Speaker 2:And asking the Lord what capacity that is Like. What does that mean for you? What does he want you to do? Because we all have different callings and different facets of the Lord and what that means, and you can easily run yourself into the ground. And so, while I admire my parents and everything that they did, I also can look at that and be like they didn't have boundaries and things weren't always safe for us and you know it could have been done differently or better. And there's always kind of that like hand in hand of where does it start, when does it end? What's the Lord actually calling you to? And are you sacrificing over being obedient, you know, because he wants obedience, not sacrifice. So I think a lot of times my parents were acting more as martyrs and doing things for the duty of them and believing that they were supposed to do it, versus for the joy set before them or because the Lord actually told them to.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's definitely some give and take there and his sheep hear his voice. So just learning how to follow that still small voice yeah, so that's a huge conversation. So, yeah, I prayed when I was three or four. I asked my older sister. She was talking about church and salvation and so I started asking her about it and, um, she got really excited and she's five years older than me, so she would have been about nine and she said jesus is so good and he's so nice and if you invite him in your heart, he'll live inside of you and then you go get to be in heaven with him when you die. And I was like that sounds great. And so I remember we sat on some dirty carpet in my living room against the couch and we prayed together and I stood up and I was jumping around and I told my mom because I knew she would be excited and she goes all of heaven is celebrating with you right now. They're all throwing a party.
Speaker 1:And I was like that's so cool yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that was my kind of earliest memory of interaction with the Lord. I would say it was a very bumpy road after that, as many Christians can attest. And growing up in such a charismatic household. Oh my gosh, I don't want to cry right now.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's all right, it's called Honest Christian Conversations. You do what you got to do Vulnerable Christian Conversations.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, it was a bumpy road of just wondering why the lord wasn't talking to me like we would read in these stories and testimonies of the great heroes that had gone before us. And reading through the bible, and no one tells you like, oh yeah, there's 50 years between this time that the Lord spoke to someone in the next time. It's like it feels like it's every day, you know, and it feels like, oh, if God is not speaking to me every day, if I'm not seeing miracles every day, then I'm not his child. And so, even though I would never say that I didn't believe that he loved me, there was that like inherent have I been forgotten? Am I unloved? And I think there's some like middle child syndrome to that too. Right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Where you already sort of feel like you get lost in the mix and so you kind of layer that onto your relationship with your heavenly father and go. Well, then he must feel the same about me. So there was a lot of that. I never stopped believing in the Lord, although I would say I fell away at different times as far as walking with the Lord and just not believing His faithfulness or not trusting Him. I got married at 20. That's a whole story in and of itself. He was almost 20 years older than me. Um, he had known my family for quite some time, so I had known him since I was nine years old. And, um, yeah, he wanted to marry me and I didn't really feel that I had a choice and so we got married and, um, I actually tried to break things off with him several times beforehand and you know, if someone's 20 years older than you, I get it.
Speaker 1:I, I get it. I I'm on my third marriage and my first one was very rocky. We went into it the wrong way. Well, I did cause I didn't want to. But yeah, so I, I get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So we were married about 10 years and I, I, I, you know, I don't regret it because the way that the Lord showed up for me and telling me that he was my husband and I didn't have to find my identity and the things that my earthly husband said about me, because my, my father, my heavenly husband, has such a clear identity of me and he knows me so much better, such a clear identity of me and he knows me so much better. And so the verbal abuse that I went through, it was like it shaped me in such a way to not receive the words of man, but to then go to my father and know what he says about me. Yeah, so that was a big learning to surrender and lean into the Lord and go to him for all of my help. And then one day it was actually we were going to go on a missions trip to Haiti and we had just met with the missionary that was going to take us there, and I just remember feeling so distressed, like I cannot go to Haiti and share with these people.
Speaker 2:I am a mess. What do I have to give them? I am, I'm being abused. I'm crying myself to sleep every night, like how, how do I go there and share the good news? And so, um, I went into my like our guest bedroom and was just praying in there and crying out to the Lord. It was eight at night, something about me you should know. I am in Talmiak, so I will stay up till like three in the morning. That's how late I was up last night.
Speaker 2:My eldest is like that, yeah, and I cannot nap for the life of me, I cannot nap.
Speaker 2:For some reason I fell asleep at like eight and it was like kind of a supernatural sleep, I think the Lord put over me and I have this dream where it felt so real, like I felt the weight, that I was a murderer and detectives were looking and just trying to find me and I'm like, oh my gosh, I killed someone. I can't believe I killed someone. Who did I kill? And I'm freaking out and I wake up and I'm still kind of like in the haze of believing that the dream is real and I'm like, oh no, what do I do that I killed someone. And then I heard the Lord say you are a murderer, because if it's in your heart, then you, it's as if you've done it. And I was like, oh my gosh, who, who have I murdered in my heart? And I immediately knew it was my husband, because there was this hatred in my heart and just like wishing that he. I'm like, well, I don't believe in divorce.
Speaker 1:So he has to die. I feel you there. I was in that position with my first one too. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So then I got on the floor, I repented and I'm like Lord, I'm so sorry, you're right, I'm a murderer. Like I have wished for his death in my heart and, yeah, that makes me know better. And so I repented of that and then somehow fell right back asleep and I was like walking up to a desk and this office lady hands me two papers and she goes you're guilty on two counts of murder.
Speaker 2:And I was like wait, who could the other person be? There's no one else I hate and she flips it over and she's like it's you.
Speaker 2:And I was like oh, and the seriousness of that hit me in a way that it's never hit me, because to me it had always felt like oh, you know, you're allowed to hate yourself, you're allowed to have that kind of self-pity. It's kind of like this martyrdom aspect of like, oh, I should, less of me, more of Christ. I'm allowed to hate me and hate everything about me. I love everyone else and the Lord is like I don't think that's cute or funny and I don't agree. I love you and I died for you and you were worth it to me and you're not allowed to hate yourself. That's murderous.
Speaker 2:And like the seriousness of the way that he loved me hit me, yeah, and so I woke up and I repented again, and this time I start pacing my house and just being like the Lord has met me in a really, really real way, in a way that I've never encountered before, like the veil is thin, and so I I need to spend time here.
Speaker 2:I need to figure out what the Lord's doing in this moment. I need to spend time here. I need to figure out what the Lord's doing in this moment. And then the Lord started like weeding these lies out of me, weeding the different beliefs that I had, that I didn't even know that I had in my heart, and so he was pulling these things to the forefront, saying like you don't believe that I'm faithful, you don't believe that I've loved you deeply, you believe that I've forgotten you, or you believe that I don't have a calling for you, and pulling these lies out and then replacing them with truths. After that, it's been just night and day difference that he has grown these things out of me, and everyone noticed the difference. They were just like who?
Speaker 1:are you?
Speaker 2:And I have no glory to give myself because I know he didn't do it. I'm like he decided to encounter me that night, he decided to lead these things and then he decided to make me into who he made me into, and that's how I know it's the Lord that, like I, can't credit anything to myself. His goodness is just so apparent. So, yeah, it's been very fun. Yeah, but that's when I think I got born of the spirit Nice.
Speaker 1:That is an intense dream that I cannot imagine. Waking up from that and just moving on with your life, how could you just? That was like a weird dream. Let's just go, let's just go back to sleep. That was like a weird dream, let's just go, let's just go back to sleep.
Speaker 1:I don't see anyone being able to do that when you've had such a visceral reaction, I guess, to it. You really felt like you had killed somebody. You woke up with that feeling of did I really do this? What have I done? I really do this, what have I done? So, whatever he was trying to do in you, it snapped you out of it immediately, which I thought is very awesome and reminds me a little of how he does things with me, because he has to go and I feel it immediately, and then I'm quick to understand what he needs me to do in that moment. I think that's great that you you figured that out right away, that there was something that you needed to do and you did it and you've healed from that. It's that's awesome. I'm encouraged and I know others are encouraged. Are you still with your husband? Are things better? Did he? How did that?
Speaker 2:No, we were married for 10 years and the Lord finally released me to divorce him, which was, yeah, just a year of torment, trying to hear the voice of the Lord and just being like I don't want to do it if you don't want me to divorce him, which was, yeah, just a year of torment, trying to hear the voice of the Lord and just being like I don't want to do it If you don't want me to. If you tell me to press through and that things will get better or that this is my cross to bear, I'll do it. And, um, that's not where my heart was initially, like I, lord, just tell me I'm not going to hell and I'm going to divorce this man. And slowly, my heart began, began to change and began to become more surrendered in our year of separation, and where I was just like, okay, lord, not my will, but yours be done. And I felt like he was like, good, yeah, finally, okay, yes, Now you can leave him. And that's a whole hour-long story.
Speaker 1:No, you don't have to get into that.
Speaker 2:You don't have to get into that the lawyer is kind and it really revealed to me how much a protector father he is, because I felt like my own father in my life had not stood up for me to know how to protect me. In those moments of you you know me getting married to this man, he didn't know how to say hey, no, it was a drug addict and 20 years older than you, and blah, blah, blah Like no, you don't just get to marry my daughter. So, seeing the Lord differently, as a protector, it's healed my relationship with him in ways that I didn't know were broken. That's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey, friends, have you joined the Honest Christian Conversations online group yet? If you haven't, you're missing out on a perfect opportunity to grow your relationship with Jesus Christ. This is a community for those who want to go deeper in their relationship. You can do Bible studies together, ask the questions you have biblically and get the answers that you might need or maybe you're somebody who has answers to somebody else's questions. You can leave your prayer requests. You can leave your praise reports. This is a community.
Speaker 1:This is what church is supposed to be, and I am so glad that I finally took that step to make this group so that people's lives can flourish in Jesus' name. Also, if you haven't signed up for the mailing list, you're missing out on an opportunity there as well. I send out a weekly email chocked full of so much awesome content that I don't have time right now to share it all with you. But when you do sign up for that mailing list, you get my seven-day free devotional that I created just for those who sign up for the mailing list. If you haven't joined either of these, you can go to my website, honestchristianconversationscom and sign up there, or you can use the links for it in the show notes. So how did you become a midwife?
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, my goodness. So I think it goes back to you know my whole life, back to you know my whole life. So my mom had had the first four of us in the hospital and then all of my younger siblings were born at home, but without a midwife, because they weren't legal back then, and so there was a lot of trauma around the home births. As far as just the big unknown and are we okay, are we not okay? Type of conversations always happening. And then her last birth, she ended up having to go to the hospital afterwards due to blood clots and she had lost too much blood, and then, yeah, all kinds of issues there.
Speaker 2:But so growing up, that was always kind of in my mind when family would gather because it was big family, that it also had so many children and they were home birth, so everyone was kind of talking about birth. When they would gather, the women would get together and say things that you just don't hear in day-to-day life, like as you're pregnant, you need to remove the leaven from your home, from your heart, and like what does that mean, you know? And so it was this like act of purification, sanctification, because the understanding is that birth is so intricately spiritual and it incorporates so much of your mind, body and soul into it. There would be this preparatory thing and knowing that if you and your husband weren't unified by the time of birth, that it could show up in complications with labor or be more painful, and so none of that really hit me, except like the intensity of birth culture and how interesting it was, because no one had ever had a midwife and so I didn't think about that being an actual job.
Speaker 2:But one of my friends who had six kids was actually just talking to me about her birds and she said, yeah, my midwife was just so there for me body, soul and spirit and she would ask me questions you know how is my marriage doing? And she would ask me where's my heart at and just guide me in all things, not just like a dialogue type of thing. And so I was like that's what I want to do. I want to be in that space. I've always been interested in health, but to know that health goes beyond the physical and there's emotional health, there's mental health, there's spiritual health and to know how to tie all of those in and help walk someone through the most transformative journey of their life. You know, yeah, it's. It just feels very, very sacred, very, very rewarding, and I'm someone who can quite easily get bored with something. I'm like ah, did that Like, I'm over it.
Speaker 1:Moving on.
Speaker 2:And this you just can never get bored of because it's there's so much to learn and so many facets of it I'll never know Probably a new experience each time too.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes definitely that's awesome. So in that moment I knew and I was just like I'm going to do it and she was like, okay, maybe you should be a doula first. So you kind of talked earlier about not knowing the difference. A doula is kind of like your educated friend, Like they've maybe done some births, done a three-day training course, and so they know a little bit about how to support you physically or emotionally. And then a midwife is in place of your OB. So more than medical training and years of education. Okay, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Now I know.
Speaker 2:Now I know, that's why you do this right.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love to learn new things. Whether I retain 100% of all the knowledge that I learn, that remains to be seen, for every time I'm in the middle of a conversation about whatever it is, but I do love soaking in things and, you know, as the opportunity presents itself, I'll be like, oh, I remember I learned about this, or whatever. So so, yes, I now I know. So if someone says midwife, I'll know the difference Get it, you're a doula, I get it. So yeah, cause I have some friends who are doulas and I'm like I don't know what that means and I don't want to ask them but I want to know, they want to be asked.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of misunderstanding as far as that goes. So yeah, it's totally fine.
Speaker 1:So I have a interesting question. Okay, when you started helping women deliver their babies the first time, was it viscerally hard for you? Because I can pass out easily over certain things, I have a feeling that if I were to see the business end of all that going on, I probably would pass out, and I've never watched any of the videos that my husband has taken of my C-sections. I just can't like the whole idea. I'm just like I don't think so, but did you have an issue the first time that you helped a woman give birth? Did it do anything to make you pass out nauseous or anything like that?
Speaker 2:No, I, it's so funny Cause if I watch a C-section video I would get nauseous too, and that's how I know. The Lord did not call me to that, but I actually. My sisters all make fun of me because I have the worst gag reflex ever, and like I would change a diaper growing up and I would puke all over the kid that I was like wow, I have no tolerance.
Speaker 2:If someone starts gagging in front of me, I start gagging Like I just can't. And yet with birth it's like supernatural. Someone could just puke all over me and I'm like, yes, of course, only God could make that a thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's like nothing in that realm that gets to me. There's been a few times where it's been like, okay, started to get tunnel vision there, but those were more extraordinary circumstances. One and it's usually when I have more empathy for the person, actually like they're a close friend and I know, like how sensitive they are. Or there was one woman that she knew from 20 weeks on that her baby was going to be incompatible with life. So the baby had anencephaly, which means no brain, and so just like a tiny little head and skull. They didn't know if the baby would be born dead alive, what that scenario would look like, but they just wanted it in the comfort of their own home. And I was actually covering for another midwife who had gone out of town while this woman was delivering and I had met with her beforehand. We sat down at Chipotle and I just bawled. She was just the most precious woman and my heart just went out to her so much.
Speaker 2:After she gave birth, the cord popped when the baby came out, because with more active babies, as they move the cord stretches, but if you don't have brain activity then they're not going to be moving a lot, except for jostling around, sort of, and so then the cord is very short and so baby came out, cord popped and so you got to get that placenta. But they're singing hymns over their baby and just praising the Lord and loving on that sweet baby, and so my heart is already like wrecked and tender. But I have to go up inside of her and get a placenta, which is not a very fun thing to do. It's pretty like grotesque. It's my least favorite thing in all of midwifery. And so I remember going up there and I like still had my coat on because we were like we ran in the door. Basically it was happening.
Speaker 2:So, so I am like going up there and I'm like, ooh, I am hot, oh my gosh, like I need to breathe. And so I like came out, you know, took my coat off and I was like I'm going to take a second here before I do this because I don't want to black out and pass out on her. Yeah and so, anyway, that was the closest experience I had to pass it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely would not make it in this career. It's so bad. I passed out once in high school watching a video about kidneys. They did not show kidneys. They did not show bloody kidneys, they were just talking about kidneys. I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. I just passed out. My friend sat next to me. He thought I died. I was just like maybe I was just bored, bored to to passing out. I don't know what happened. They had some funny nickname for me at that point. I don't remember what it was, but I laughed, even though I was super embarrassed. I laughed but yeah, I would not. Would not make it in this line of business, that's for sure. It's not everyone's call to it. Yeah, and the fact that you can do it and you don't have any instances of that shows me. And the fact that you have that visceral reaction to just gagging shows me that God is doing something supernatural with this, that it's where your heart is.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that's an awesome testimony to when you're called, god equips you to do what you're called to do, and that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I tell people all the time I am not naturally talented or good at anything. All the time I am not naturally talented or good at anything. I've never been my entire life. And the way that I was able to just pick up midwifery and run with it, and the way that the Lord has sustained me through it, I know that this is the Lord's calling for me and it's so important to know that, because I think this is one of the hardest jobs in the entire world Very rewarding, but one of the hardest jobs in the entire world and so to know that you're called to it and the Lord is sustaining you and the Lord will keep you and carry you, is so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine it's hard in many different ways. Like you were just saying, you had to deliver a baby you weren't sure was going to be alive or dead, and I can't imagine having to deal with that. And it's not like you get to just walk out of the room afterwards. You're there for them, the whole process, which means you're grieving with them as well, which I can imagine is extremely hard to do. But I'm sure you've also had some super wonderful joys as well. Is there one you'd like to share with us? That was an awesome experience where you just really felt God's presence in the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, actually, yeah, Probably so many of them.
Speaker 2:And I think often the harder the birth, the more intense the presence of the Lord. I mean, even just going back to that anencephaly one, that was probably one of the most beautiful births I've ever done with a family, and rightly so. They could have been like why, God, why would you do this? And just mourning. They were just praising the Lord and everyone's just singing and praying and thanking the Lord for every moment they got with their baby and we're listening to that heartbeat. We're listening to that heartbeat. We're listening to that heartbeat and that baby is still alive and she's her heart would beat faster when she's skin to skin with the mom and then it would start slowing down when she was moved away from the mom, and so you're seeing this like syncing up with their bodies and even that is just like the design of the Lord. You know that symbiotic relationship of being skin to skin and how intensely spiritual that is, you know. Yeah, Out of 500 births I can't say that there's one that was like not sacred or not beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of the dumb midwife that cries at every other birth, you know.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think that's dumb. I think they, I think they appreciate and want somebody who really cares, because you can tell when someone really cares and when someone just is there because it's their job, and I think that's one area of life where you just really want someone who cares, because they're walking with you through the whole thing. They have questions. Yes, maybe it's their fifth child and they're asking questions and they should know this. They've had four other children but they're still asking because each one is different. I know with my children I had so many different questions that I would beat myself up and be like you should know this already. This is number three. How do you not know this?
Speaker 1:But I mentally was not present for my first child because there was a lot of trauma going on with that situation. And during my second I was still going through all that trauma, even though I was in a new relationship, but I was going through new baggage that I was adding on to that as well. It was not living for Christ either, so I didn't lean on him during that. So I had a lot of blockages, I guess, during my first two births. So when I had my other three children with my husband, who I'm with now, who is a good Christian man. It was all new to me. I don't remember doing this with my other two children, or I, you know, I don't know Was this how it went with the others? I don't remember.
Speaker 1:And they need somebody to care.
Speaker 1:You can call your doctor and they're just going to give you an answer and sometimes you can tell when they really don't care.
Speaker 1:So for you to be that empathetic and to be very involved in every aspect of who you are, I think gives them that assurance that they need so that they can relax, because it's probably a very scary thing to give birth at home, because we've been programmed to believe that you can only do it at a hospital with a doctor who knows what they're doing, because what if something happens and you need this? But if we just allow people to have that, okay, let's relax. We can make this experience relaxed, we can make the whole pregnancy relaxed. Then maybe an emergency, anything going to the hospital, would not be a situation for you, because you've been at peace. You've been at peace with God. You've been at peace with things or people in your life that maybe you have troubles with. You do it all, you're putting them at a peace in a supernatural way that you're not going to get from somebody who doesn't care. So I think it's very important that you have that strong tie to who you're involved with at that time, because they need it.
Speaker 2:And especially as women, and some people want it and some people don't, you know, and I just had this talk with the team last week where we're like, yeah, let's really engage with that individualized care aspect and figuring out what people want. You know, I think sometimes we just assume, like we have this mom that came in, that she's had all home births, this is her eighth baby, and so we can kind of just be like, yeah, you know the deal and just kind of run everything and she, like told us this last week she goes. You know, this is probably my last baby and I'm just so excited to fully engage with every aspect of this process and I'm just receiving this with so much joy. And we were like, oh yeah, yeah, this is special for you, even though you know it can kind of feel like run of the mill and you can get into this groove of like this is just every day for us. But you know, for each of these women it's a special, transformative journey. Each one of your, your pregnancies and your births were special in their own way and transformative in their own way, even if they were hard or sacrificial or whatever it was, or even if you disassociated their own way, even if they were hard or sacrificial or whatever it was. Or even if you disassociated in some way, there were things being done in you and someone that you were becoming in that process and so learning how to facilitate that.
Speaker 2:Well, and not everybody wants that from us. Some people are just hiring us to be their professionals and that's totally fine. So it's the level in which they want to engage that we can jump in and engage with. You know, and I would say for the people that are coming to us, home birth is not a scary thing. Hospital is more scary for them. They're like oh, please don't take me to the hospital, that's so scary. Yeah, they, um, they typically are just very comfortable and at peace at home and they understand the design of the Lord and that the Lord made them well, their body works, they're not broken, and so they fully believe in the ability to give birth peacefully at home. And the Lord designed that. He made us with beautiful, incredible, intricate bodies that work very well.
Speaker 2:But we live in a fallen world and so there are things that happen. There are exceptions to the rule, but largely we don't want to treat everyone like the exception to the rule we want to come in with the understanding that if we support the body well and we support the mind and the spirit well also, that your body then will take care of you if we can take care of it well, also that your body then will take care of you if we can take care of it. So we try to come with that approach and bringing things as closely back to design as possible, for you created me in my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb. He did a good job and so trying to bring things back as closely as possible to what he did, so that things go as normally as possible. And then, if things don't go normally, then yeah, we go into the hospital, where you know we're thankful that they are there for the abnormal births for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So this might be kind of like a question, but do you work with only believers or have you had people come to you who are open to you, doing it from a biblical perspective, and have they had a transforming moment where maybe they came to Christ during that time, or just you can tell that there was a difference, even if they didn't?
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know. I would say that most of our clients are believers. We're pretty open about it. So it's on the website, it's on our bio. I feel like birth is such an intimate experience. You should know where your team stands. I would want to know who my midwife is praying to if something happened. Yeah, I would want to know what spiritual stuff is in the air. We're very open about that.
Speaker 2:We've had lots of people that are not believers, but you know they'll even come to us and they'll say I actually really like that. You guys are believers, because that's. That means you're going to treat me like my body isn't broken. You're not going to come from this from a perspective of fear, and that's how I want my midwives to act, from a place of faith. And so we're like great. And you know some people will still ask like, can we pray over you after birth? And sometimes they say yes and sometimes they're like no, thanks. We're like okay, fine, great, well, love you, see you in 24 hours and that's okay. We've not had any moments of like someone getting saved in their prenatal appointment or something like that. But I know that there are seeds being planted. We speak to people from a perspective that the Lord is chasing after them and that one day they're going to be saved, and so they're just a pre-Christian in my opinion. I'm like, oh, you will be, the Lord will find you. He's not.
Speaker 1:All right. So anyways, nice, yeah, that's awesome, it's very fun. Nice, yeah, that's awesome, it's very fun. Well, gloria, this has been a super awesome conversation. You're such a fun and sweet person to talk to. I can see how much you care, and that is definitely critical in the type of work that you do. Before we go, how can people get in touch with you if they know somebody in the area who needs a wonderful midwife, or they themselves maybe need a midwife?
Speaker 2:The website is glorybirthcom. Yes, named after me how annoying. But no, it really came from the heart of being like. The Lord wants to make this experience truly glorious and so, no matter how it turns out, the glory of the Lord can be found in it and he will be named, glorified. So, um, yeah, glorybirthcom. Um, there's also just more information, helpful blogs on there and um different educational material to to look into. So, yeah, lots of fun, fun stuff there. Well, thank you so much for having me yeah.
