We were lucky to catch up with Morgan Lynn recently and have shared our conversation below.
Morgan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you in your professional career?
Before I started practicing as a birth and postpartum doula, and before I began cooking on a more professional level, I was farming and living in a Zen Buddhist temple in Marin County, just over the Golden Gate from San Francisco. The way the form of farm life and the schedule at temple shaped my daily rhythms has been an invaluable gift, on so many levels. Waking before sunrise for meditation, going to sleep with the sun, bringing presence and intention to simple daily tasks, like sweeping the floor or washing my hands really helped me experience a deeper practice of non-separation with nature, and helped cultivate gratitude and humility in me. It has been one of the greatest gifts in my life.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Morgan Lynn, I was raised in Kentucky and I live and practice now in Los Angeles. My doula practice, Cottage Inside, offers a framework and guidance for self care and planning for women in the pre-conception time, in pregnancy and in the postpartum time, which is the first 6 weeks after a baby is born. I practice through the lens of Functional Nutrition and Ayurveda to offer detailed guidance in really taking care of oneself during this time, in order to optimize outcomes. The women and families I work with are guided in many areas, birth planning, curating their provider teams and birthing locations, budgeting, choosing healthcare and insurance coverage to leverage care, daily self-care practices to optimize fertility and wellness throughout pregnancy and the postpartum time. I teach trimester-specific cooking classes and offer recipes and menus that highlight not only which foods to prioritize, but also where to source them and how to prepare them in a way that infuses delight into the daily rhythm. The practices are very simple but also elegant, which I hope organically makes the practices sustainable for my clients.
I attend the labors of my clients in the role of birth doula in hospitals, birthing centers, and at home, offering comfort measures for contractions, holding the crucial skill of patience, encouraging the mental process of labor, providing emotional support, and supporting the labor to be more efficient and productive through maternal positioning guidance for optimizing the baby’s position. I also cook for home births, preparing simple foods that help a laboring mother sustain her energy, and I feed the birthing team. I primarily work on teams with medical care providers (midwives and OBGYNs) that I have very close relationships with, which is an incredible gift to give to a laboring woman and her family. To walk through such a vulnerable, transformative time in the care of a team that not only holds a deep love and reverence for her and for the birthing process, but who also trust and deeply respect each other…that is one of the greatest gifts I wish for all mothers, and honestly, is one of the surest ways to optimize outcomes for mother and baby.
In the postpartum time, I join clients in their homes for six weeks to provide proper postpartum care from the scope of a doula. My role in the postpartum time is to support women and their families in staying together with their newborns in the first few weeks. I support the breastfeeding transition, and draw from research mostly garnered from Medical Anthropology, which has been the best source of information for how we, as a mammalian species, are biologically designed to coexist with our newborns while we are recovering from labor and integrating a new baby into our lives. As in everything else, if we want an easier, smoother transition, I have found the best route is to look back to nature. I prepare special foods to honor and nourish the family, help with presenting ideas and options for establishing a daily rhythm with baby, and I offer a form for mother’s self care, which includes daily warm body oiling, herbal baths, and other self care practices that support her as she transitions through this bridge time from pregnancy back to fertility, a time known as involution. During this time, I do not take over the care of a newborn and I am not there to “help with the baby.” Many mothers find that they do want support during this time, but they feel very sensitive around the idea of separation from their baby. My practice honors that intuition, keeping everyone together while still meeting the needs of both parents and baby, it fosters proper bonding and increases breastfeeding success rates, and wow – the confidence in my clients is incredibly beautiful.
These days I’m only able to take on a handful of clients per year and the demand is ever increasing for this kind of care, especially in second and third time mothers who yearn for a different experience than they’ve had after their first baby. To try and meet the growing demand, in 2024 I’ll be offering a series of group and virtual classes and will be releasing a quarterly series of seasonal recipe collections so that more families can have access to my work. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter for upcoming announcements on new offerings.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
I remind other doulas who come to me for guidance that our work in this field is really just to offer kindness and love. Our service is to help other women and their families to feel seen and prioritized during a very precious time that they will only get once with each baby. I have found it’s more important not to waste time and resources with lots of trainings, unless they are very specific skills, but just to start working and have a critical mindset around continuously improving the way we show up for clients. It’s certainly true for me that every project I do is different from all others. That’s the fun of it, and this is creative work from the heart
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
For me, it’s been showing up in authenticity. Because that has created a practice that is very unique to me, and is difficult to replicate elsewhere. There is a saying we hear often in cooking that the secret ingredient is usually love – this is why our grandmother’s food only tastes exactly the way it does when she makes it herself. I offer a practice that is unique to me because I’ve always been too fiery and rebellious to take advice from anyone else. That has its pros and cons, of course, but for me, it has produced a practice I’m very happy and proud to offer in the world. We were laughing together recently in the home of some very dear clients of mine where I was supporting with postpartum care. Her partner came to me with her empty water glass, saying she had requested the “special way that I make her water,” haha. I showed him how I layer boiled water with room temperature water in the glass to get the coziest warm temperature for drinking…but really it’s just a glass of water. The secret ingredient is the love and attention to detail in honor of a new mother and her journey to birth and baby. That was a very sweet moment that I love to think back on.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cottageinside.com
- Instagram: cottageinside
Image Credits
Jamie Street, Carson Meyer, Shelby Moore, Anna Patrikian, Jess Bianchi