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 supplied by South Korea’s postpartum care facilities.
The nation could have the world’s lowest birthrate, however additionally it is dwelling to maybe a few of its greatest postpartum care. At facilities like St. Park, a small, boutique postpartum middle, or joriwon, in Seoul, new mothers are pampered for a number of weeks after giving delivery and handled to hotel-like lodging.
Recent meals are delivered thrice 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. Ladies who select to not breastfeed are free to spend their time centered on therapeutic. (The infants are stored 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 price from a number of thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, relying on the size of keep, which is commonly 21 days, the period of time it takes for a lady’s physique to heal after childbirth, in line with Korean customized. However the facilities weren’t at all times so luxurious, mentioned Soohyun Sarah Kim, 46, the proprietor of St. Park.
