As a Minnesota family and newborn photographer, I get to witness so many of the most tender moments in a family’s life. And the more I talk to moms, the more I realize how much of the postpartum season gets glossed over. We spend months preparing for baby. The gear, the nursery, the birth plan. And then suddenly we’re home, it’s 3 a.m., and nobody told us it was going to feel like this.
That’s the whole reason I started the Made for Minnesota Moms YouTube series. Real conversations with real Minnesota women who support pregnancy, birth, and postpartum with resources you can actually use.
Today’s guest is someone I am so, so glad exists. Hannah Kuduk is a Minneapolis-based night nurse and postpartum doula, and the founder of The Folk Doula. She offers in-home daytime and overnight postpartum support, nourishing meal service, and even travel doula care for families who need a helping hand beyond the Twin Cities. Her approach is rooted in traditional, community-based models of care. Think less clinical checklist, more village.
Our conversation went so many places I didn’t expect.
Meet Hannah Kuduk, Night Nurse + Founder of The Folk Doula
Hannah Kuduk is a Minneapolis-based night nurse, postpartum doula, newborn care specialist, integrative nutrition health coach, and the heart behind The Folk Doula. She brings over a decade of experience as a career nanny and family household manager, along with deep training in herbalism, physiologic baby care, and lactation support.
Her credentials include certification as a birth and postpartum doula through BirthEd, Integrative Nutrition Health Coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, Physiologic Baby Care Certified through Innate Postpartum Care, Lactation for Doulas Certified, Newborn Care Specialist through the International Nanny Association, and 10+ years as an herbal apprentice.
But what makes Hannah different isn’t just what she’s studied. It’s where she comes from. She grew up surrounded by generations of women who sat at births, worked in childcare, and supported each other through every transition. She was, by her own description, born a doula.
Her practice, The Folk Doula, is a love letter to the lost art of communal care. Grounded, whole-family support that’s holistic but not woo-woo, evidence-based but full of heart, and always personal, never prescriptive.
Hannah primarily supports postpartum families for newborn care through overnight postpartum support, daytime visits, and travel care, as well as families looking for postpartum meal service.
What Is a Night Nurse and Why Does It Matter?
Before I get into the Q&A, I want to set some context, because I’ll be honest. Until I started this series, I didn’t fully understand what a night nurse does or how different it is from other newborn care.
A night doula is not just there to hold the baby. Hannah makes an important distinction: a newborn care specialist is highly focused on the baby. A postpartum doula providing overnight postpartum support is focused on the whole family. Mom’s healing, the nervous system, the family structure, the rhythms of home, and making sure everyone feels supported through one of the biggest transitions of their lives.
That can look like overnight postpartum support so parents actually sleep. It can look like processing the birth story over herbal tea. It can look like someone folding laundry, prepping a meal, sitting with you while you nurse, or just being a calm and knowledgeable presence in the room when everything feels new and a little overwhelming.
One of the most powerful things Hannah said in our conversation was this: we plan for weddings for months. The guest list, the food, the environment, who does what. We think about all of it. And we rarely give that same intentionality to the postpartum period. Who is in your space? Who is handling what? Who is making sure you are taken care of?
That’s what Hannah wants every postpartum family to know is and should be possible.
The Village We’re Missing
A theme that kept coming up in our conversation is something I think about a lot in this series: we are raising our families in a culture that is more isolated than it was ever meant to be.
Historically, a birthing person was surrounded by neighbors, community members, and generations of family. People who knew what needed tending after a birth and just showed up to do it. A warm meal, gentle hands, a listening ear. We still need all of those things. We just stopped building the infrastructure for them.
Hannah talks about night nurse care and overnight postpartum support as one way to rebuild that village. And she also said something I really needed to hear: we can sometimes boundary ourselves into isolation. It’s okay to invite in support that isn’t perfect. It opens the door for real conversation. It gives us a chance to tell the people we love, this is how I need to be cared for.
If nobody has told you yet, it’s okay to ask for help. The people in your life want to support you. They just might not know how.
Watch the Full Interview
Before I share the highlights from our Q&A, I want to give you the full conversation first.
If you’d rather hear Hannah explain all of this in her own words, and trust me, her warmth and the way she frames things is something you really have to experience, press play below. If you’d rather skim, keep scrolling. I pulled out all the questions and the moments that stuck with me most.
Q&A with Hannah Kuduk, The Folk Doula
1. What does a typical overnight shift look like?
When Hannah arrives for an overnight shift, she starts with a check-in. How has mom been feeling physically, how are things going with the relationship, who is in the postpartum bubble, what does the support system look like? That first conversation often involves processing the birth story, which we’ll get to in a moment.
Then she sends the parents to bed. That is, as she says, the most important piece.
While parents sleep, Hannah takes care of baby through the night, handling diapering, soothing, and supporting whatever the feeding journey looks like, whether that’s nursing, bottle feeding, or combo feeding. Her goal as a night doula is to protect that four to five hour sleep window for the birthing parent. Her overnight postpartum support shift typically runs 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., at which point she passes baby to the partner so the birthing parent can continue resting into the morning.
2. Why do you ask about the birth story?
This is one of my favorite things Hannah shared. She describes us as nesting dolls. We carry every version of our past selves within us. Our childhood, our teenage years, every major transition. Birth marks one of the biggest transitions of all, and what our body goes through in that experience lives in us afterward. How we respond to pain, to fear, to the feeling of “I can’t do this”, all of that comes up in birth. And it needs somewhere to go.
Processing the birth story isn’t just a warm-up conversation. It’s part of the care.
3. How does overnight postpartum support work if mom is breastfeeding?
Every time baby wakes to nurse, Hannah goes in, gently wakes mom, and brings baby directly to her. She might stay at the bedside to support with latch and positioning, or she might step out to give mom and baby that bonding time alone. When nursing is done, Hannah takes baby back, handles all the burping and soothing, and gets baby back to sleep so mom can return to horizontal as quickly as possible.
The whole goal of overnight postpartum support is protecting her rest while making sure the nursing relationship is fully supported.
4. How many nights a week do most families have a night nurse, and how long do you typically work together?
The most common cadence is every other night, so roughly three to four nights per week. Hannah hears frequently from families that just knowing their night doula is coming that night helps them get through the day.
As for duration, it’s family-dependent. She has packages designed for families who want consistent overnight postpartum support over multiple weeks to months. For families who just need a one-time exhale, she offers a single session. A 4-hour daytime visit or an 8-hour overnight, available as a flat-rate, a la carte booking.
5. What should families look for when hiring a night nurse or postpartum doula?
Hannah says certifications matter. You want to know that the person in your home is educated, reliable, and trustworthy. But she’s quick to point out that postpartum doulas bring a wide range of backgrounds and certifications to the table. Some families will connect with a night doula who also has a nutrition background. Others want someone with lactation credentials. The credentials that matter most are the ones that align with what you need.
Beyond that, she says you want to feel genuinely comfortable in this person’s presence. This is someone who is in your home, in your most vulnerable state, caring for your brand new baby. The trust piece is everything.
Some specific things she recommends asking about: safe sleep guidelines, infant and child CPR training, and what the doula’s response plan is if something goes wrong. Hannah also has a full postpartum interview guide with questions families can use going into a doula consult [link here].
6. Tell us about your travel doula services. What does that even mean?
Hannah’s background in traveling with families is deep. She has gone to weddings, business trips, and domestic and international destinations. Planes, buses, all of it. But she also reframes what travel support really means: it’s about navigating change. Getting out of the house for the first time with a newborn is a form of travel. The logistics, the gear, the “what if something goes wrong” concern. That’s exactly what she’s there to help with.
Her job is to make it feel less frantic and more held. Carrying the bags, passing baby on the plane, getting everyone settled, and making sure the experience of stepping out into the world with a new baby doesn’t have to be something you dread.
7. What’s the biggest misconception about hiring a night nurse or any sort of support?
That it’s a luxury. Hannah pushes back on this firmly. What a night doula does is help make sure your foundational needs are met. Sleep, hydration, community, companionship. And foundational needs should never be considered a luxury.
She also shared some resources worth knowing about. UnitedHealthcare recently announced support for postpartum and birth doula care. Employer-sponsored fertility benefit programs like Carrot can also be used to connect with a night nurse if your employer offers that benefit. And for families without those options, Hannah has seen people ask for community funding toward overnight postpartum support instead of a traditional baby shower, because babies truly need very little and what new parents actually need most is rest and support.
8. Can you share a powerful moment from your work?
What Hannah said was so honest and so right. The most powerful things often live in the small moments. The small wins that are easy to lose in the blur of the postpartum season. A moment of connection. A morning that went well. The first time something clicked. Those small moments are the ones that carry us forward.
The Real Life Rescue Kit
At the end of every episode, I ask my guests for three Minnesota-specific recommendations that help moms in real life. Here’s Hannah’s:
Go-to takeout spot when dinner just isn’t happening: Brim in Uptown, right off Lake Bde Maka Ska, is her top pick for healthy food and a beautiful setting. Her bonus recommendation is Victor’s Cuban Cafe in South Minneapolis, a neighborhood hole-in-the-wall where everyone knows her name and the community feeling is unmatched.
Kid-friendly outing that’s actually worth the effort: Westwood Hills Nature Center in St. Louis Park. Paved and unpaved trails, great family events, and in the spring, a fairy walk where little community-made fairy houses are tucked into the hollows of the trees along the path. Hannah has taken many nanny kids there over the years and loves it.
Local resource she recommends to moms all the time: Mother Baby Wellness Co. in Hopkins. Dr. Chrissy is a perinatal and pediatric chiropractor and midwife who Hannah regularly refers families to for bodywork for mom and care for babies who may be experiencing tension from birth or fetal positioning. Lactation support and bodywork are two resources Hannah says families often overlook in the postpartum season but can make a tremendous difference.
Where to Find Hannah
You can connect with Hannah and The Folk Doula here:
A Personal Note from Me
I started this series because Minnesota moms deserve real conversations and real resources. Not the bounce-back narrative. Not generic internet advice at 2 a.m. The real stuff.
Whether you’re deep in the postpartum season and wondering how you’re going to get through tonight, or you’re still pregnant and just starting to think about what overnight postpartum support might look like, you deserve a team. You deserve a village.
As a Minnesota family photographer, I spend my days documenting the beautiful chaos of family life. But behind every photo is a real mom navigating real seasons. Supporting moms is bigger than photos for me. I want you to leave here with something you can actually use.
If you’re getting ready for postpartum, grab my free Minneapolis Pregnancy Guide. If you want more conversations like this one, join my newsletter so you don’t miss the next episode.
Because motherhood was never meant to be figured out alone.
And if you’re ever ready to document this season of your family’s story, I’d love to connect with you.
Disclaimer: This blog post is for educational and informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not a substitute for professional medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek advice from your physician, midwife, or other qualified healthcare provider with questions about pregnancy, labor, postpartum, or your health.
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