Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
It’s ‘like heaven for postpartum patients’
Mothers, newborns receive pampering, care at pricey postnatal retreat centers
When Alicia Robbins had her first two children, she, like almost every woman who has birthed a child before her, felt overwhelmed upon leaving the hospital. Never mind that she herself is an obstetrician and gynecologist.
Both times, having a child “was way harder than I expected,” said Robbins, 39. “I kept wondering if it was OK that breastfeeding was so difficult or that I felt anxious. I kept asking myself, ‘Is this really my new normal?’ ”
Her mother traveled from Arizona to help her, “but she kind of froze,” Robbins said. “I love her, God bless her, but we had fights over things like whether you need to sterilize the breast pump for three hours.”
So when Robbins, who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, had her third child, Otto, on April 5, she welcomed the opportunity to check into a retreat for mothers with means, who have just given birth, and their infants. Until now such retreats were usually private, community-based options not available to the wider public.
“We are there to ease the transition between the hospital and home,” said Boram Nam, who, along with her husband Suk Park, founded Boram Postnatal Retreat, which is located on the ninth floor of the five-star Langham Hotel in New York City and opened Mother’s Day weekend. (They named the retreat Boram because it means “something fruitful after hard work” in Korean, Nam said.)
For a hefty price tag of between $1,300 and $1,400 per night, a woman who just had a baby gets many of the things she needs (physical and mental care; medical care, however, is the responsibility of the mother and her outside doctor) and even more of the things she most likely wants (sleep; foot rubs on request; banh mi delivery to her room; and a breast pump cleaned between uses.) Most guests stay three, five or seven nights.
Robbins checked in about one month after Otto’s birth; she had learned about Boram from a colleague. It was her third cesarean section and she found post-operation recovery very difficult — all the more so because she had a 4-year-old and 2-year-old at home.
When she arrived at Boram, she was mentally and physically exhausted, so she delighted in the marble bathtub, rainfall shower, Nespresso machine and Swedish Duxiana bed. Her suite was also equipped with a hospital-grade bassinet and eco-friendly Coterie diapers. Menu items include foods believed to nourish new mothers: seaweed soup, bone marrow and steak.
She checked out the mother’s lounge, a serene space with plants and cozy couches. There were lactation cookies, at least half a dozen types of teas and a refrigerator full of hydrating beverages. The lounge is also where Boram brings in pediatricians, physical therapists and mental health experts offering general seminars on topics including pelvic floor therapy and how to fall asleep more quickly.
Robbins’ favorite part of the floor, however, was the nursery, helmed by a former Lenox Hill Hospital NICU nurse educator and staffed by employees with a background in infant care, to watch the baby whenever the mother wants.
“I sent Otto to the nursery within three minutes of being there,” said Robbins. “And I went to sleep.”
“I even read a book,” she said, during her three nights there, and her husband stayed for one. (Partners are welcome to stay as well; other children are, understandably, not.) “This is like heaven for postpartum patients,” Robbins said.
Even women who have spent nine months preparing to go home with a baby are shocked by how little institutional support they receive once they actually do. Women frequently have to find their own lactation consultants to assist with nursing and therapists to help with postpartum depression, Robbins said.
“Doctors might give you a number to call, but for the most part you have to coordinate things yourself, and you don’t even know what you need until you go through it,” Robbins said. Many moms go home from the hospital with little more than a folder full of pamphlets; others rely on Facebook groups for even serious challenges.
Postpartum health is something that largely gets ignored in the United States, said Kristin Sapienza, founder of FemFirstHealth, a New York
City clinic that provides services to mothers after they give birth.
The United States has a higher rate of maternal mortality than other developed countries, and women of color are disproportionately affected. Maternal deaths — women who died during pregnancy or shortly after — went up during the pandemic especially in Black and Latino populations, according to a study by the National Center for Health Statistics.
“I think a lot of women suffer in silence or don’t get the resources they need,” she said.
“If we really supported people in raising families like Sweden,” or other parts of western Europe where postpartum home visits, for instance, are part of universal health care, said Catherine Monk, a professor of women’s mental health in obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, “we wouldn’t even need a facility like this.”
Nam said she was inspired by postnatal retreat centers in South Korea called sanhujori, where “new moms go to after they leave the hospital for 14 days to get pampered.” The average cost for a two-week stay is about $2,000 to $5,000, so while they are still by no means inexpensive, they are slightly more accessible than a place like Boram.
Sanhujori are an ingrained postpartum tradition because the few weeks after a woman gives birth are acknowledged as essential to the health and well-being of mother and child. Baek-il is another tradition, where mothers and infants lie low for the first 100 days after birth. On the 100th day, they celebrate.
Postpartum centers, which emerged about 15 years ago in South Korea, said Nam, were a natural next step for a culture that prioritized caring for new moms. “It’s understood that you have family and friends who can help you with child care or food and making sure you are not alone.”
Monk said this type of care or tradition exists in many places around the world in addition to South Korea.
In Latin American cultures, for example, a new mother rests for 40 days, during a time called “la cuarentena” (or “quarantine”), while people in the community do household chores for her and bring her hot, healthy soups to eat.
In China, she said, new mothers have a month of confinement named “zuo yuezi,” — or, in Mandarin, “sitting the month” — where they build up their strength and bond with their baby after childbirth by staying at home.
Monk said a place like Boram is what every new mother deserves: “If I could design the ideal, this is what everyone would have postpartum, and they would know they were getting it.”