Carson Meyer

The doula and C & The Moon founder takes us inside her Topanga Canyon home.

By Lindzi Scharf

Photography by Kate Jones

Doula Carson Meyer has been a part of so many births, she’s lost count. 

“I have them written down, but it’s over hundred,” the bubbly blonde says, seated on a couch in a Topanga Canyon rental she found on Craigslist shortly before the pandemic hit. “I’m just going to burn out, and then have my [own] kids, and then burn out again.” 

It’s an understandable admission given the pace she’s been keeping of late. Meyer says that she’ll often head to a client’s house at two in the morning for a forty-hour birth and then will sleep for the next twenty-four hours. “It’s like my version of rock-and-roll,” she says, laughing.

Due to hospital restrictions during the pandemic, Meyer got creative and began virtually coaching clients all over the country. Recent pregnancies include Mandy Moore, Elsa Hosk, and Gigi Hadid, the latter of whom opened up about the experience in a Vogue cover story earlier this year.

While burnout is a very real future possibility, for the moment, Meyer is all in. 

“My friends all make fun of me because I have a birth ball in my trunk and all my bags are always packed,” she says. “I haven’t traveled much the past [four] years. I’m always on call.”

FINDING HER WAY

Prior to discovering the birthing community, Meyer was pursuing acting, which included a role as Willadeene Parton, Dolly Parton’s sister, in a 2015 made-for-TV movie called “Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors.” She also did a few indie films including artist Alex Israel’s 2017 drama “SPF-18.”

It was a natural move for Meyer, who grew up observing the industry through her father Ron Meyer, the former Vice Chairman of NBCUniversal and a founding talent agent at Creative Artists Agency. She says, however, her father was pleased when she pivoted to a different profession. Well, sort of.

“When I started acting, he was terrified,” she admits. “Starting as an agent and being on the other end of the phone of all the terrible things you hear and the heartbreak and [having witnessed] the endless cycle of what that means to be an actress, I think he was like, ‘Please. Not my daughter.’ He was excited for me to find something else. Then when I found [being] a doula, he was like, ‘You’re what? That was not what I was talking about.’” She laughs, sharing that he’s since come around. “What’s funny is that because L.A. is so small, my dad will be somewhere and someone will come up to him and be like, ‘Your daughter was my doula,’” she says. “He still doesn’t fully understand what I do, but he’s like, ‘Well, she’s doing it. She’s not making it up.’”

GROWING UP 

Like most people, the Carson Meyer of today is a world away from who she once thought she wanted to be. As a teenager in high school and college, Meyer didn’t think she wanted kids, which she had mistakenly deemed a feminist act. “I remember saying, ‘I will never have kids,’” she says. “I saw my mom give so much and I was like, ‘I don’t think I could ever give that, but that’s what’s required.’ I had this really skewed idea of what a mother needed to do and I didn’t think I could ever fill that. I totally respect and admire women who choose not to have children and who choose that path, but it is unfortunate we’ve taught women that unless you’re going to be the everything mom, you can’t [have a thriving career and be a mom].”

Meyer’s perspective evolved after watching the 2008 documentary “The Business of Being Born” for a college course. “It was the first time that I saw images of women laboring,” she says, “that wasn’t the Hollywood depiction of like blood and masks and men standing over you.”

After graduating from New York University and returning to Los Angeles, Meyer met her boyfriend, singer-songwriter Johnathan Rice, who introduced her to a midwife. “I cornered her at a party,” she says. “Meeting a midwife was the first time I realized you could have a career that’s not being an OB in this field.” Meyer was so moved by their conversation that she decided to throw herself into doula training.

“I’ve never fit in a box,” Meyer says. “I was addicted to acting classes and being with people who wanted to fully reveal themselves. And then I found birth and was like, ‘This is that too.’ I love both, but being in the birth field, I realized that there are other ways that are more in your hands to deeply connect with someone and impact somebody’s life and all the reasons I was drawn to acting.”

C & THE MOON

Beyond being a doula, Meyer is also the founder of C & The Moon, a clean skincare brand whose Malibu-made brown sugar body scrub is a favorite of Kim Kardashian. While the company was launched in 2018, its hero product dates back much further. Growing up, Meyer had sensitive skin and would steer clear of harmful chemicals and toxins. She used to mix organic ingredients in her kitchen, which led to C & The Moon’s signature brown sugar body scrub. The concoction was originally her go-to gift for friends and family, but her younger brother encouraged her to sell it after it became a hit at his USC frat house. “All the jocks were stealing the scrub from his room,” she remembers. To test the water, Meyer made a batch and sold it on Instagram. “I was in my kitchen doing it with a label printer,” she says.

Meyer then met Cristina Carlino, founder of skincare and beauty brand Philosophy. “She had tried some and loved it,” she says. “She saw what I was onto and was like, ‘Do you want to do this right?’ She mentored me through it, but also gave me the initial investment to help me get the trademarks and get the logos done and take the operation out of my kitchen.” 

Most recently, C & The Moon released a Birth Blessing Candle, which was inspired by the pandemic. “When COVID hit, nobody was having baby showers and people weren’t having their families with them,” Meyer says. “There was a lack of ritual around this transition and a feeling of aloneness going into the birthing process. I came up with the birth blessing candle as a gift and a way of creating a circle and a special ritual around birth.” The company also introduced a Glow Oil for body and hair care.

IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY

Meyer comes from a close-knit family of mini moguls. Her older sister, Sarah Meyer, is the founder of Roe Caviar, a favorite among the fashion set including Brandon Maxwell and Rachel Zoe; her other sister, Jennifer Meyer, is known for her fine jewelry line, which is beloved by celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson, and Courteney Cox.

“They’re incredibly supportive,” Meyer says of her sisters, sharing that Jennifer occasionally helps her navigate business decisions. “I feel so fortunate to be able to ask her questions.” For example, Meyer says, “As a small brand that doesn’t have a lot of resources, people want gifting. She does a good job of reminding me that it’s okay to say no sometimes too. My inclination is to say yes. She’s kind and everybody loves her, but she’s also tough. Something she’s helped me with is to realize: It’s okay to also have boundaries and lines of how much you give as a brand, and to protect your small business.”

Meyer also credits her mother—Kelly Chapman Meyer, an environmentalist who works closely with the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council—with informing her interest in clean beauty and environmental advocacy work. “I was grounded for painting my nails in an unventilated room; that was the worst thing I could do,” Meyer says of growing up in an ecofriendly household. “Because of the way I was raised, a lot of it came second-nature to me in terms of the products I used and the mindset I had. My role as an advocate even as a doula comes from a lot of that.”

LOCKDOWN LIFE

Despite hospitals limiting access to family members and doulas during the pandemic, Meyer says she was able to keep busy throughout the year and that, if anything, the restrictions created a renewed interest in her profession. “When something is taken away, a lot of people are like, ‘Wait. What is that? Why can’t I have it? I want it,’” she says. “In a way, doula work and the importance of it became more relevant than ever. I saw so many more people eager to learn, knowing that they were going to be going into the hospital – for those who were having a hospital birth – with new regulations. So many parents were like, ‘I want to know how to be my best advocate if I can’t have my mom, my sister, my doula.’ It was actually my busiest year.” 

The sudden demand led Meyer to launch a virtual class called Growing Together. “That was inspired by seeing that influx in curiosity and having more people reach out, but not being able to support them how I normally would,” she explains, sharing that the classes helped create a sense of community for soon-to-be new parents who weren’t able to bond through traditional venues like baby showers and Mommy & Me groups. 

The classes include women from all over the country. It started with twelve women and it’s since expanded to twenty-five, which, Meyer says, “I capped it at because I love how intimate it is. It’s all done on Zoom. I’m like, ‘Look, I’m going to over-prepare you so that if I can’t be there in the hospital with you, I want you and your partner to have more than enough information to be able to navigate with me on Zoom without me being there.’”

She says the unique circumstances led each group to feel a particularly special bond to one another. “I’ve never met most of these women in person,” Meyer says, “but I feel so connected to them and then [it’s been incredible] watching how connected they are to each other. We have a group chat for each group. The first one was almost a year ago now and they’re still talking—and now some of them are hanging out in person—the ones who live in L.A. And now all their babies are born and they’re talking about sleep schedules and things that are way beyond my expertise. They started now helping each other through those parts. That’s been a blessing of this time.”

THE CHALLENGES

While Meyer managed to pivot during the pandemic, that’s not to say it was an easy transition. Once doulas were allowed to return to hospitals, Meyer admits, “I would definitely get worked up a few days before I’d have to go in. You’re watching the news and you see what we picture a hospital looks like in a time of COVID, but when you [get] in there – it’s labor and delivery. You go into the room and we create the vibe and you feel really safe. Even though they’re all geared up, they still carry on just like they would. Yes, everyone is shielded and masked, but when you go into the room the energy is controlled.” 

Naturally, this time period also led to soul-searching – and a dog. “My boyfriend and I had gotten into an argument,” Meyer says. “I was having one of those female moments, like, ‘When are we going to have kids? When are we getting a house? When are we going to have a dog?’ He was like, ‘Oh my God. We’re in a pandemic! You need to stop pressuring me. I love you. We’re in this together.’ By that night, I’d convinced him we needed a dog. I was like, ‘Pick one—the kid, the house, the dog.’ Finally he was like, ‘Fine, fine. The dog.’” She laughs. “But now, he’s so happy. Everyday, I’m like, ‘Can you believe we didn’t have Paulie before?’”

Meyer admits she does occasionally still wonder how she’ll juggle her many interests with being a parent. “My biggest fear of motherhood is, ‘How am I going to give the time that I want to for motherhood and have all these other passions?’” she confesses. “Because I hardly even have time for myself now, but every mom makes me feel so much better. They’re like, ‘It forces you to value every minute and prioritize your schedule.’ That gives me so much hope because every time I’m in the company of a mother, which is always, I’m like, ‘How are you doing it?’ It amazes me. I think being a mother is the most important thing ever. But then if you have any other job, passion, anything—how do you even have one minute for that?”

Looking ahead, Meyer is still interested in acting in addition to her love for the birthing community. She’s currently taking an herbal medicine course and becoming certified as a nutritional consultant for pregnancy, birth, and post-partum, which she plans on incorporating into her current business. She also has new C & The Moon products in the works that will, she jokes, “come out in the next 50 years. I see all these brands and it’s kind of how I feel when I see moms. It’s like, ‘You do this? And then you have another one?’ It’s amazing that any brand gets more than one product done.”

Meyer is also back in the hospital and doing home births – for now, anyway. “I love doing births, but I know I need to slow down because I’m pulling four all-nighters a month,” she says. “I can’t do that forever and I eventually want to start my own family where I don’t abandon them by sleeping through half the month after a birth.”

Even so, Meyer pinches herself every day. “Five years ago, if you’d asked me, none of this would have been in my dream,” she says. “But I feel like I’m living my dream.”

HOW SHE LIVES….

“We were living with my mom after the Woolsey Fire,” Meyer says. “Living with my mom – and with my boyfriend – was fun, but it was time for us to get our own place. It was stressful because we had moved so many times with the fire. We were like, ‘We don’t want to move again.’ I found this place on Craigslist. I dragged him here and it was a dream. Thank God we found this little slice of heaven and what a blessing too because we had trails that are private and so even when trails were all closed through California, we were able to be outside in nature. It felt like we had time traveled or something into this little cabin, which was nice mentally to be able to escape the realities of the world.”

THE PEACOCKS

Meyer had a few friendly visitors throughout the pandemic – a family of peacocks. “They had five little babies and it was the sweetest thing,” she says. “She would bring them by and teach them how to fly. I, and the rest of the world, got a garden box when COVID started. Remember when that was a thing and everybody was making sourdough bread and learning how to garden? I was like, ‘I’m going to do that.’ I got a garden box and the peacocks brought their babies in there and would take mud baths. I Googled it. It’s a thing. They would dance around in the mud with their babies. It ruined my chances of a garden box, but I was reading about it – it’s a version of exfoliation for them. They were exfoliating in my mud bath.” 

A BOUQUET

“This is from one of my clients,” she says. “I’m always so touched when I get home from a birth and the mom who has just given birth has had the thoughtfulness of sending me flowers before I even get home. Usually with flowers you only get a certain amount of time, but I’ve had these for months because they’re dried up. This is a special bouquet that I will never throw out.” 

THE LOOKING GLASS

“This is my dad’s that I found in his office and took,” Meyer says. “When he moved out of his office, all the kids came. We went to the studio and went through it. He had rooms of storage because my dad’s an OCD clean freak but he’s also a secret hoarder. My mom has always gotten shit for being [messy]. He’s always like, ‘Your junk piles.’ [With my dad,] everything is like one pen on a white surface. But then she’s like, ‘You think it’s me? Look at these rooms!’ Anyway, we found so many gems from twenty years of being stored in a closet. So that was one of the things I loved.”

HER GRANDMOTHER’S VASE

“These peacock feathers and hawk feathers were found in Topanga,” Meyer says. She then points to the vase. “My grandmother made this. She was a ceramicist and an enamelist. I would do ceramics with her as a kid growing up. I have plates there from her. She passed away 15 years ago. This is a piece that also I found in my dad’s office. She was so generous with her art and would gift it to everybody, so it’s sweet because my godmother and other people in my life have gifted it back to me. I’ll get a lot of gifts that were her pieces that she had given them. She also was a knitter and that’s also how I started knitting. It’s something I did for many years. I was obsessed. I thought that that was something that I would do—that I would have a knitwear line.”

HER GRANDMOTHER’S ART

“This one is so different,” Meyer says, “because my grandmother did a lot of birds and nature pieces, but the alcohol one is so funny because she’s so not a drinker and neither am I. This one has more masculine energy than her other ones. We have a lot of her enamel pieces in storage from her, but we didn’t realize that so many other people did as well. She would sell them on cruise ships, which I guess was a thing back in the day—local artisans or resident artists on cruise ships. They’re on eBay for like $100, which is cheap, but like, ‘Yeah grandma, that’s a good price.’ I buy them. My sister Sarah, the most thoughtful Meyer, is always like, ‘This was my grandma’s.’ And so one [vender] wrote a sweet letter back to her recently being like, ‘I can tell how special your grandmother was by this piece.’ It’s not competitive, but sometimes I’m like, ‘Wait. You found that one?!’”

HER MOTHER’S NECKLACE

“This is a necklace my dad gave my mom when they first started dating,” Meyer says. “Isn’t that pretty?”

HERBAL MEDICINE

“I’ve been studying herbal medicine with Aviva Romm, an M.D. and herbalist,” Meyer says. “I’ve always been passionate about women’s health. I also have so many friends who are struggling with things where their doctors don’t know how to help them unless it requires a gnarly intervention. But it’s a very fine line. That’s what makes me anxious about it because you can actually get in trouble for practicing it in certain states because you’re not a doctor, but nobody owns herbs. It’s not pharmaceuticals. It’s based in a lot of traditional indigenous wisdom. It’s passed on through generations. … I’ve always been interested in natural and herbal remedies. I’ve been using herbs for the past 20 years.”

THE STOVE

“This is a wood burning stove from the seventies,” Meyer says. “It’s what we used to heat the house our first winter here. We had to put logs in it and start the fire. Then Johnathan had to go to Scotland when his grandmother passed away, so I was left to do it by myself and nearly froze to death. But it’s the reason why we were like, ‘This is our place.’ It has a stork on one side and a baby on the other side. We were like, ‘It’s made for a doula.’ Isn’t that sweet?” 

PURGE WRITING

“I’m working with this amazing holistic doctor,” Meyer shares. “One of the first things he had me do was start ‘purge writing.’ He’s like, ‘12 minutes a night. Set a timer. Write. Don’t stop writing. Just write about everything you’re mad about. Purge it out and then burn it.’ … I nearly burnt a hole in our bathtub because I was trying to do it in the tub, so I started putting it in here and burning it here instead. All my worries are in here.”

HER PUP PAULIE

“We rescued him off Instagram,” she jokes. “He literally came up on my suggested search page. Much like the sourdough and the garden box, everybody decided to get a dog [during the pandemic]. I’m highly allergic to animals, so I needed a poodle mix. It still didn’t work. I’m working on it thanks to my herbal supplements, but it was a disaster for the first month. We named him Paulie Walnuts after the Sopranos cab driver. My boyfriend is obsessed with ‘The Sopranos’ and we watched the whole thing in a week.”

HER HOME OFFICE

“Johnathan calls it C & the Mess because it’s also where all of our junk goes,” she laughs. “Cabin living is seasonal, so I can’t sit up here when it’s too hot. It is a great office space, but sometimes I end up working downstairs. Still it’s nice to have a space. It’s my little den. I do all my virtual client work up here. It’s also where I do my yoga and my meditation.”

THE DAILY GRIND

“I spend a lot of time meeting with my clients,” Meyer says. “I feel like my day-to-day is catching up on the previous week. Daily rituals are something I want to be better at and I still haven’t figured it out. I always meditated, but not since getting a dog because in the morning now, I’m excited to see him and then I want to feed him. Having a new creature definitely disrupts your routines. I wish I was somebody that was better at that and I try.” When she’s not working, Meyer enjoys hiking and taking dance classes. “Those are the things that I prioritize,” she says. “I can see why people wake up at six to do those things because they definitely end up taking half the day, but I feel like it helps me work better.”

HER OFFICE WALL

“Rachel Carson is my namesake,” Meyer says. “She’s an environmentalist and writer from the 1950’s who wrote ‘Silent Spring’ and was the first person to shed light on bioaccumulation and toxins and pesticide use. She was way ahead of her time.” Nearby sits another piece of art. “A friend of mine brought that painting back for me from Nigeria where she was a doula for a time,” she says.

SUCCULENTS

“We had a planned power outage here,” she says. “It was from ten am to five pm. No Wi-Fi, nothing. We didn’t have service, so we couldn’t even text. It was nice. I went over the hill, got all these plants, and I started planting succulents everywhere. I got my hands dirty in the dirt and I was like, ‘This is how my days should be spent. Maybe this is something we should do once a week, where we unplug the router and do things that people used to do before we had iPads.” She pauses. “But that’ll be the last time I do something like that until the next outage,” she jokes.

THE LATEST CANDLE

C & The Moon’s new Birth Blessings Candle was inspired by Meyer’s sister, Sarah. “When my sister had her baby shower over two years ago now, instead of a shower, she had a birth blessing ceremony,” she shares. “It was so beautiful. We went around and everyone lit a candle, so that was where I first saw this idea of a non-traditional baby shower, which is more centered around the mother’s needs and the rite of passage.”

Everyone who participates in Meyer’s virtual class receives a candle. “It’s something all the girls do when we close the last circle,” she explains. “Everyone gets a candle and we all give our blessings to one another. When each mom goes into labor, they text our thread and then we all light our candle and hold a special thought for her. Even with distance, we’re still connected.”

HER CHILDHOOD HOME

“The painting was also something I pulled out from my dad’s office,” Meyer says. “I love it so much. It’s my favorite view in the world of my old house in Malibu. I lived there from six until two or three years ago. Well, my parents lived there two or three years ago. I spent so many birthdays on that lawn. I have so many memories in the soil there. As we’ve been searching for houses, we’re like, ‘What?! For no yard! Nothing!’ We’ve thought about leaving L.A. a few times. I know everyone has. Everyone’s in Texas now. I love L.A. because my family’s here, but I think this year gave us more of an appreciation for nature and space.”

BIRTH CLASS PROPS

“The pelvis is fun,” she says. “I use that for my classes. I have my birth bag in the car with all my props, like my dolls, the placenta, and everything.” After taking the items out of her car, she puts together an artful arrangement. “We have the placenta and the umbilical cord,” she explains. “This is our baby. The vagina. The labyrinth. This is another pelvis. The labyrinth is used as a metaphor for the birth process and post-partum.”

THE DRESS 

“A girl on Instagram reached out to me,” Meyer says, discussing her dress by California designer Tayma Martins. “She hand-makes them and she offered to send me one. I was so flattered because I know that as a new business sending pieces is expensive. She’s a fan of the scrub, so I was happy we did a trade.”

THE BOOTS

“I got these in Nashville,” she says, referencing her pink cowboy boots. “I wrote for Rolling Stone for a summer when I was in college—in the country music division on the road. I was obsessed with country music. It was a summer internship, but they gave me some cool things to write. It was me and two main writers. I was the intern. Because it was just us, they’d be like, ‘Do you want to take this?’ I had the best time.”