US needs Korean-style maternity hotels
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By Jane Han
NEW YORK ― I recently learned something new about America at the most unexpected time and place ― in hospital, right after giving birth.
I guess I’d been used to the Korean hospital system where newborns are typically kept and taken care of at the maternity ward’s central nursery. So naturally, that’s what I was expecting. That is, until I found out an hour after delivering twins that my room was the nursery ― a full-time nursery.
There was no prep time, no warning, no nothing for the new mom. The nurse came to drop off the babies just after I got settled into my room and never came back to pick them up.
It was the so-called rooming-in practice that I was thrown into fresh after a cesarean section.
It turns out that this new baby-friendly approach is a trend spreading quickly in many of the hospitals across the U.S.
A few hospitals in Korea offer rooming, only if a mother wants it. But U.S. hospitals are aggressively advocating this new nursery policy to help mothers and babies get acquainted better and faster.
This sounds quite the opposite from the latest maternity trend in Korea, where moms and babies don’t get much time together from the hospital to the maternity hotel.
At the hospital, nursery visits are usually not allowed outside of visiting hours. And at the maternity hotel ― now a must-go postpartum destination ― a full-service staff takes care of babies so that new moms can get all the rest they need.
Rooming-in definitely has its benefits, but I must admit, a Korean-style maternity hotel is what my body needed to help recovery after a surgery.
So what exactly does a maternity hotel entail?
Meals and snacks throughout the day, basic baby care lessons, body and facial massage, and yoga classes, to name a few. For a two- to three-week stay, on average, prices range anywhere from 1.5 million won to as much as 10 million won and higher.
Maternity hotels have become so mainstream in Korea that women are advised to make reservations as soon as they find out they’re pregnant in order to beat the competition.
While up at 2 a.m. at the hospital trying to take care of a crying newborn, I wondered how the business will do in the U.S.
I sure would take advantage of it, but my guess is that it’ll never go mainstream here.
Why? First of all, postpartum recovery isn’t nearly emphasized as much in America as it is in Korea. This is both a cultural and physical difference.
Korean women are told to be extra careful with their body for at least three weeks after giving birth. No bathing, no air conditioning, no cold water and the list goes on with a bunch of other no-nos. But for Western women, it’s business as usual for the most part.
So, paying a couple of thousand dollars for just a few weeks to recover after delivery may sound outrageous to a lot of people here.
Also, most freshly-minted moms don’t seem to mind the rooming-in nursery policy. It’s accepted as a natural and positive nursing practice. I agree. It is. It just takes a super heavy toll on your body.
The moms I chatted with at the hospital generally welcomed this new trend, which made me feel a little guilty for wanting some rest and uninterrupted sleep at night. But my excuse to them was that I have twins. It seemed to work.
Considering the overall differences in Korea and the U.S., a Korean-style maternity hotel may not exactly get accepted here, but who knows? There might be a huge hidden customer base that secretly wants pampering and recovery briefly away from their newborn.
That we’ll never know until Korean maternity hotels take a chance in the U.S.