Would you take your newborn to stay at a £1,795-a-night spa?

Times

16-05-2025

Two weeks after giving birth to my son I check into a luxury hotel room in London and eagerly reveal my boobs to a woman called Pat.
'Let me see your nipples,' she says, which I like for its straightforwardness. Pat is a midwife at the Tenth, a new 'postpartum retreat' at the Mandarin Oriental hotel next to Hyde Park. And like all the other people who have earnestly observed my breasts recently (I have bared them several times at my local community centre and paid a lactation consultant £150 to look at them in my living room), she is helping me to master the art of breastfeeding.
Pat props herself up against a unit where a bottle of sparkling fermented tea, two champagne glasses and a complimentary pair of silk pyjamas sit next to a hospital-grade breast pump and a tray of sterilised flanges. I start reeling off my newborn/new mother woes, no doubt classics of the genre. My tiny, hungry baby, Vincent, wants to feed every 45 minutes. My nipples are in agony. After I feed him he seems to cry in pain. The longest stretch of sleep I've had is 90 minutes and at night I am hallucinating in the darkness. What oh what can I do to make it all better?
I take Vincent from his shiny new YoYo buggy and show Pat, who is in her mid-fifties and used to work for the NHS, how I feed. She tells me that I need to keep feeding repetitively on the same breast so that he gets to the full-fat hindmilk as well as the skinny foremilk. 'It's like you're giving him endless portions of salad but never letting him have the steak and chips,' she says. Poor little guy.
Vincent was born with a heavy dose of drama in late March. I had spent 11 uneventful hours being induced, waiting for a hormone gel the midwives had inserted to send me into active labour. But when my cervix refused to open more than 1cm they administered a second dose — minutes later Vincent's heart rate was plummeting and suddenly I was the subject of a category 1 emergency: mother-to-be on the operating table in under ten minutes.
I wasn't sure, after the precariousness of the birth, that I'd make it to the Tenth. A few weeks before my due date it had all sounded very alluring, to stay in a luxury hotel room where I would be served three nutritious meals a day, given a schedule of restorative treatments — massage, reflexology, belly binding, lymphatic drainage — and have access to a roster of specialists in lactation, pelvic-floor therapy and baby massage, like a super-pampered school for new mums. But after the birth it felt somehow facetious, like the whimsy of a pregnant person who didn't know what was about to hit them.
After two nights on the postnatal ward James and I returned home and ran on relief and adrenaline for a week. I was floored by the awfulness of C-section recovery in the company of a newborn and finally understood why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. And I had so, so many questions. Primarily: 'Is this really what everyone else has quietly been through while I've been having a good time?'
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And so, on the 16th day of my son's life, we pull up outside the Mandarin Oriental and hand the keys to our bird poo-covered Renault to a valet. We head through the marble lobby and up to the seventh floor, where the Tenth has moved in, with 15 double rooms, a mothers' lounge and round-the-clock baby nursery. Guests can stay for three, five or seven nights (or longer) for £1,795 a night, making a three-night stay £5,385 and a week £12,565. That includes your room, three meals a day, as much baby care and baby education from the midwives as you want, plus massage, reflexology, breastfeeding support, a therapy session and incision care if you've had a C-section. Partners are welcome to stay, either in the same room or you can pay for an adjoining room. They don't get their meals included though (James ordered Deliveroo).
Hiba Siddiqui, the Tenth's British founder, is a former investment banker and businesswoman. When she had her first baby five years ago she had an easy pregnancy, but the postpartum period left her feeling 'very overwhelmed, very isolated and very lonely'.
And she's not alone. In the UK about one in ten women suffer from postnatal depression and rates are on the rise. Meanwhile, breastfeeding rates at six to eight weeks postpartum are some of the lowest in the world.
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So Siddiqui wondered why there wasn't more support in place for new mothers. She points to cultures where a 40-day period of rest, support and guidance is observed for new mothers, such as in China, Latin America and in her own Pakistani heritage. And she looked to South Korea, where as many as eight in ten women check into postpartum care centres called sanhujoriwon, where they are fed, shown how to care for their newborns, offered facials and left to recover while maternity nurses tend to their babies.
More recently these centres have been repackaged as lucrative modern wellness retreats in the US, with the opening of Fourth Trimester in Chicago, Boram in New York, and Sanu in Washington. The Tenth — referring to the tenth month — opened in March and is the first of its kind in the UK, catering to 'local mums prioritising their aftercare', according to Siddiqui, and plenty of wealthy expats.
I feel guilty even considering checking Vinnie into the round-the-clock nursery but this doesn't last long. By his third wake that night, at 2am, I break. Maybe just this once? I WhatsApp the nursery and they tell me they'd love to have him. Two women — a midwife and a maternity nurse — welcome my son and a bottle of pumped breastmilk into their baby Zen zone, where the lights are low and there are cots lined up against the wall. I am sheepish but they make me feel as if it is the most natural thing in the world to outsource his care.
At 6am, after the most delicious four hours of sleep, I wake up to a message that arrived two hours earlier — was I supposed to be checking? Does this make me look awful? — saying 'Vinnie is very happy and sleeping soundly'. Next to my bed I can use a tablet to watch a live stream of his crib.
I will receive some variation of this message — that Vinnie is happy and sleeping soundly — several more times during my stay (look, the nursery is addictive), and I start to wonder whether it's always true or if they're just telling a mother what she wants to hear. Because if it is true, the most beneficial thing I could do at this retreat is not sleep but stay up all night and watch how the nursery wizards do it.
Over the next two days I have various in-room appointments — a psychotherapist; a traditional eastern healing session called A Mother's Warming; a lactation therapist. I also learn from the nursery wizards that he is a particularly gassy baby and they show me how to squash his legs up and play him like a fart accordion.
It's all very lovely and helpful, if a little 'White Lotus does a postpartum retreat', and I go home feeling a bit more rested — albeit for 48 hours — and better fortified to actually enjoy my sweet little baby boy.
So, will the Tenth revolutionise postpartum care? Clearly not at these prices. But do I think that lots of women could benefit from staying in a place where they can recover from childbirth and learn how to mother? Yes. Siddiqui says that the Tenth is 'looking at ways' to bring it to 'all women across all demographics'.
Vincent is now eight weeks old and I am overcome with wonder every time I look at him. He's getting smilier and chubbier by the day and I have Pat to thank for that: I never, ever let him go without his steak and chips.