The words ‘New baby’ and ‘rest’ are not natural bedfellows but that may be about to change….A month of massages and nourishing brothsPut your feet up, get some sleep, and don’t even think about doing the laundry! For the majority of new mothers in the UK these instructions might pass as an eye-rolling attempt at satire, so far removed are they from most women’s experience of early motherhood.
But to effect real change there needs to be a cultural shift too. Whilst enforced postpartum confinement feels a tad totalitarian maybe we need to be ordered - in no uncertain terms - to put down that laundry basket for the sake of our collective mental health. Trend forecasting agencies such as The Future Laboratory are noting a boom in luxury resorts. See New York’s Boram Postnatal Retreat for proof. In Asia it’s common place for big-name hotels to provide month-long retreats that would quite frankly warrant squeezing a baby out for, but what does post-natal wellness look like here in the UK?
While we haven’t quite reached the level of the $125,000 a month Singapore retreats this side of the pond, there has been a marked shift since Li had her baby 6 years ago; ‘We've had about 30% more enquiries this year and those enquiries are booking much more quickly,’ says Clio Wood, founder of the award-winning &Breathe retreats .