Luxury postnatal retreats draw affluent parents around U.S.

After Ayra Redondiez’s son was born five weeks early last December, she went straight from the hospital to the Village Postnatal Retreat Center in San Francisco.

During her six-night stay, Redondiez, who works in human resources at a software startup, got lactation coaching, baby CPR training and a massage. Her husband joined her, and they were able to sleep through the night while their newborn dozed in a staffed nursery down the hall. They were also able to check back in after health complications for their baby unexpectedly sent the family back to the hospital midstay.

“It’s such a big thing to know you’re not alone and to have that support,” Redondiez says. “For me, that was priceless.”

The cost of her experience? About $6,300, a price that’s far from affordable for the average American family. But as more luxury postnatal retreat centers open across the U.S., operators are finding customers among affluent new parents looking for an alternative to at-home recovery. The nascent businesses are capitalizing on the relative dearth of postnatal support services in the U.S. — while also highlighting a gap in access.

For $1,050 a night at Boram Postnatal Retreat in New York City, new moms receive three meals a day delivered to their room, round-the-clock breastfeeding support and hands-on training in baby-care skills such as swaddling and bathing. Hospital-grade bassinets make it easy to wheel newborns from their parents’ room to the nursery and back again, while cameras pointed at each child allow mom and dad to peek in from monitors.

For $1,045 a night, guests at Sanu Postnatal Retreat in Tysons, Virginia, near Washington, can stay for up to 12 weeks of recovery and education. Ahma & Co will welcome parents with its team of doulas, therapists and newborn specialists for $1,650 a night when it opens March 15 at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach Resort & Club in Dana Point, California.

Demand is there, operators say. Esther Park, Ahma’s founder and CEO, says her center has 4,000 people on its waitlist. Investors are interested, too. Late last year, Ahma closed a six-figure early investment round with a slate of backers from the U.S., including Dorm Room Fund and General Catalyst; and South Korea, including VNTG Corp. and TheVentures Co.

The rising popularity of doulas — professionals who provide emotional support and guidance during pregnancy, birth and postpartum — suggests the level of consumer interest in related services. The doula and birth coaching market is on pace to generate an estimated $25.7 billion in global revenue in 2033, up 79% from 2023, according to the research firm Future Market Insights. An IBISWorld industry analysis specific to the U.S. also shows steady revenue growth in recent years.

“It used to be that society filled that need” of supporting new moms, said Darcy Sauers, a doula and marketing strategist who helps other doulas build their practices. “Now that’s not happening, so you have a business opportunity to fill that.” Billings and staff at her own postpartum doula agency in the Dover, New Hampshire, area have tripled in the past five years, she said.

This month, New York-based Boram is averaging about eight bookings every night, up 48% from a year earlier. Revenue from corporate partnerships has doubled since 2022, said co-founder Boram Nam, who previously worked in hospitality and decided to launch the business in part because of a difficult recovery after her second child was delivered by cesarean section. Firms including EasyKnock Inc., which buys homes for cash, cover employees’ entire stay at Boram, while others, such as KKR & Co., offer a discount.

Although the concept is fresh to the U.S.—Boram, the first of these centers, opened in 2022—postpartum retreats are common in many Asian countries. In South Korea, eight in 10 new moms go to a joriwon after giving birth, where they have access to meals, child care classes and pampering such as massages and facials. In Taiwan, parents are increasingly spending their postpartum period at luxe centers that are a mix of a ritzy hotel and exclusive hospital wing. Less expensive options are also available. Gary Lee, founder of MamiGuide — a large online platform for confinement services, as they’re called in Taiwan — has estimated the industry brings in NT$12 billion ($382 million) in annual revenue.

In contrast, the vast majority of American mothers give birth in a hospital and are sent home soon after. Before the pandemic, a parent who gave birth vaginally stayed at the hospital for two days on average. The country’s largest professional organization for obstetricians and gynecologists recommends providers bring patients in for a comprehensive follow-up no later than 12 weeks after birth, yet almost half don’t get routine postpartum care.

The U.S. is also the only high-income country in the world that fails to guarantee parental leave for new moms. In a 2020 analysis of maternity care in 11 high-income countries by the Commonwealth Fund, only the U.S. failed to guarantee new parents postpartum home visits by nurses or midwives covered by national insurance. Lower levels of social support have been associated with higher instances of postpartum depression, while a lack of lactation support has been linked to poorer breastfeeding outcomes.

The high-end recovery centers are nonclinical, meaning they don’t technically offer health care; but they’re staffed by doulas, nurses and medical assistants with the training to know when guests should seek a doctor’s care. At the Village in San Francisco, staff members instruct moms on how to take their own blood pressure with an automatic cuff and recommend contacting a medical provider if the result is outside the normal range.

“The postpartum experience, it can be very lonely,” said Laurie Zephyrin, senior vice president for advancing health equity at the Commonwealth Fund, which researches health care. “People are now expected to go home and know what to do with a newborn, how to breastfeed and how to recognize signs and symptoms of complications within themselves. And when people have these experiences, they may not know who to call.”

New parents checking into places like Ahma and the Village are likely to have the financial resources to hire doulas, lactation coaches and other maternity services and to have jobs that come with parental leave. But even well-to-do Americans can still yearn for the kind of wraparound care and social understanding of the challenges of new parenthood, emotional and physical, that’s normal in other countries. In Chinese culture, for example, a one-month period of rest and recovery at home is standard. In Mexico and other Latin American countries, there’s a 40-day period of recuperation known as cuarentena, during which a mom’s social network steps in to help with household tasks. In the U.S., emphasis is often placed on mothers bouncing back quickly. Affluent adults are also more likely to live farther away from their own families, making it harder to rely on grandparents or siblings as caretakers in the weeks after delivery.

“In the U.S., there is a significant problem in the way that we treat mothers,” said Park, the Ahma founder. “That also stems from not just the way that our health system is currently arranged but also the way our community is arranged.”

Certain approaches have been tweaked to appeal to a U.S. audience. While stays in joriwons in South Korea usually stretch to 21 days or more, postpartum stays in the U.S. are typically shorter. Most centers have a three-night minimum; at Boram, the average stay is five to seven nights.

There’s more individualized care, too. In a joriwon, moms may breastfeed in a group. U.S. sessions are more often one-on-one and tailored to the parent. Spouses and partners can come along in the U.S., which isn’t always the case in other countries.

Retreat owners are eager to broadcast different options for guests to shoulder the considerable cost. Families can add stays at the Village to their baby registry, and a detailed bill at checkout can help parents get insurance reimbursement for services like lactation support. Operators hope the U.S. industry will eventually resemble that of South Korea, where there are budget postnatal recovery options, luxury ones and a spectrum in between. But regardless of the level of frills, the government typically subsidizes some of the cost.

Nam thinks that’s possible for the U.S. She points to fertility treatments, which were much less accessible a decade ago, with only a handful of employers offering financial assistance. Although they’re still out of reach for many people, such treatments have become available to a larger cohort. Survey data from the workforce consultant Mercer showed that in 2015, 36% of the largest employers — those with 20,000 or more employees — covered in vitro fertilization, for example. By 2020, it was 42%.

“It took about 10 years and change to get there,” Nam said. “To start from out of pocket, very expensive, not a lot of support or understanding or awareness, to companies coming in, states stepping in from the government side. That’s the path I think we’re on.”