What is postpartum care? Retreats offer new parents nursing, doulas, health care.

When Siming Zhu gave birth to her daughter via cesarean section, she didn’t go home after leaving the hospital. “We knew absolutely nothing about child care. We needed someone to show us: This is how you change a diaper, this is how you swaddle, this is how you wash a baby’s hair,” said Zhu. “They sort of show you in the hospital, but it’s that blur of the first few days, and I was recovering from a C-section—I was not going to remember.”

Zhu and her husband opted for a stay at Boram, a postpartum retreat in New York that is part of a growing suite of options for new parents in the United States.

Around the world, postpartum treatment is far more normalized and prioritized than it is here. In France, new mothers receive 10 sessions of pelvic floor therapy. In the Netherlands, a postnatal care specialist comes to your home for the first eight to 10 days after you give birth. In Korea, subsidies are given for postnatal and postpartum care. Korea is also where postpartum retreats have really taken off, coming into the mainstream about 15 years ago—there are expensive privately owned retreats, but also more affordable government options, which can be largely afforded with subsidies.

“I chose a government-owned one, as it was cheaper, but I was very impressed with it,” said Rowena Shek, who lives in Korea and had her baby in 2020. “The staff were fantastic, food was delicious, and the hygiene standards were top-notch. I was given massages and advice when I needed them, not to mention regular classes on how to bathe or swaddle a baby, which was very much needed for a confused first-time mother like myself.”

Brittany Yoon, who recently gave birth in Korea, opted for a two-week stay at Heritage, a private postpartum care center in Seoul, after having her daughter. Heritage is one of the most expensive retreats; Yoon paid $873 a night but was able to use her government subsidies toward the bill. For Yoon and her husband, there were delicious meals, massages, daily vitals checks, socializing opportunities with other new parents, and spa sessions. The baby care is equally luxurious: When Yoon’s daughter developed a diaper rash, “the nurses left the diapers off and took turns fanning her butt for almost 12 hours straight until the rash went away.”

Esther Park, founder and CEO of Ahma & Co, a new postpartum retreat in Orange County, California, said that in Korea, “80 percent of women utilize the postpartum retreat services after they give birth. It’s a no-brainer.” Meanwhile in the United States, postpartum care is not the norm—meaning it will cost you.

At Ahma & Co, the average cost of one night is $1,600. For that price you, your newborn, and your partner get the experience of staying at a luxury hotel (the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach), along with a host of postpartum care options including on-call doulas, lactation educators, therapists, and newborn care specialists. Not to mention nutrient-rich foods tailored to the postpartum experience, massages, sitz baths, and all the products and goodies you both want and need after giving birth. In March, before Ahma & Co even opened its doors, it already had a 4,000-person waitlist.

In addition to providing new parents with a high level of care, the existence of retreats like Boram, Ahma & Co, and Sanu, which is just outside of Washington, D.C., has also thrown into stark relief what is available to new mothers in the U.S., and how different those offerings look depending upon what a person can afford out of pocket.

“We live in a country where 1 in 4 new mothers goes back to work within two weeks of giving birth and more than 90 percent of Americans who are low-income don’t have a single day of paid leave,” said Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Moms First. “That is unconscionable.”

For many in the U.S., the only postpartum care they receive is the six-week checkup with their OB-GYN, an appointment that nearly 40 percent of women miss. The U.S. also has a maternal death rate three times higher than any other developed nation, and a rate of postpartum depression that hovers around 20 percent.

“I was a neonatal ICU nurse, and I was angry that no one talks about the postpartum part, not even in nursing school,” Sarah Mallin, director of operations at Boram, told Slate about her postpartum experience. “I struggled even though I knew how to swaddle, I knew CPR, I knew how to bottle feed, I knew how to breastfeed, and I still struggled. I was thinking, I can’t imagine someone who knows absolutely nothing because it’s not their profession, how they must be struggling.”

For the women who have attended these postpartum retreats, they credit the experience with helping them heal and relax postpartum, as well as teaching them very necessary infant caretaking skills. One woman who stayed at Boram called it “probably the greatest five days of my life.”

“A lot of women feel very dismissed in the postpartum period—there’s no procedures to really be done so doctors really can’t make money on you postpartum,” said Kristin Sapienza, a physical therapist and founder of FemFirstHealth. “I don’t know how much more blunt I can get.”

Those behind the postpartum retreat businesses already have price tags and access on their minds. “We’re hopeful that companies will start to invest in the postpartum journey as they have in the IVF journey,” said Mallin. The IVF process was considered prohibitively expensive just a few decades ago, but is now part of many companies’ insurance packages. “Some companies have actually paid for their employees to stay with us,” she said.

Currently, 19 states require insurance companies to pay for infertility coverage like IVF. “Even in New York City, they’ve started to allow insurance to pay for doula care and nutrition services. This is just the next wave of: What can we do foundationally for people in order to support them and their long-term health?” said Jennifer Jolorte Doro, a mom who stayed at Boram who is also a nutritionist consulting with Ahma & Co.

Getting these retreats to be widely subsidized by employers or insurance companies is still a far-off dream. It will take time to develop a system that recognizes the care new parents need, whether at their doctor’s office or at a retreat. Park noted that any discussion about postpartum care is a very recent addition to the American conversation. “I don’t think people realized that postpartum care was something that you needed to proactively think about” more than five years ago, she said.

“Everything in this country starts off as a luxury, even though it might be a necessity, because that’s just the society we live in,” added Mallin. “I think you have to prove the dollar benefits that a service provides before people start paying attention to it. We hope to be the proof of concept.”