19th October 2024

4 moms sat quietly within the nursing room round midnight, breastfeeding their new child infants. As one mom nodded off, her eyelids heavy after giving delivery lower than two weeks earlier, a nurse got here in and whisked her child away. The exhausted new mother returned to her non-public room to sleep.

Sleep is simply one of many luxuries offered by South Korea’s postpartum care facilities.

The nation might have the world’s lowest birthrate, however it’s also dwelling to maybe a few of its finest postpartum care. At facilities like St. Park, a small, boutique postpartum middle, or joriwon, in Seoul, new mothers are pampered for just a few weeks after giving delivery and handled to hotel-like lodging.

Contemporary meals are delivered 3 times a day, and there are facials, massages and child-care lessons. Nurses watch over the infants across the clock.

New mothers are summoned from their rooms solely when it’s time to breastfeed within the communal nursing room, the place they’re watched by the nurses. Girls who select to not breastfeed are free to spend their time centered on therapeutic. (The infants are saved within the nursery all through the day, although moms can request their newborns be despatched to their rooms at any time.)

Staying at a joriwon can value from just a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, relying on the size of keep, which is usually 21 days, the period of time it takes for a lady’s physique to heal after childbirth, in keeping with Korean customized. However the facilities weren’t all the time so luxurious, mentioned Soohyun Sarah Kim, 46, the proprietor of St. Park.

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