The wellness industry finds its next target: New mums

NEW YORK – When Jasmine Hamilton, a labour and delivery nurse at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, had her first child in November, her life changed forever – as it does for all new mums.

But what she did not expect, she says, is how becoming a parent “completely shifted how I show up for myself, especially when it comes to my health”.

The post-partum period has typically been a poorly understood time for many women and for the medical community at large. That began to change in the 1970s, when American medical anthropologist Dana Raphael coined the term “matrescence” to describe the immense and permanent physiological shift new mothers go through.

In the past decade, researchers have begun to understand and document the extent to which matrescence changes women hormonally, developmentally and psychologically for the rest of their lives. While the term still is not in most dictionaries – or commonly used in conversation – new scientific research is helping mothers understand these changes.

The wellness industry is taking note. Beauty products, wellness treatments and multi-day retreats aimed at new mums are a growing business.

In 2019, research by Spanish neuroscientists published in the journal Human Brain Mapping found that matrescence causes women’s brains to change as profoundly as it does during adolescence. A 2023 study published in Cognitive Sciences made those changes even clearer, showing how the brain’s neuroplasticity permanently adjusts to greater cognitive load.

Perhaps most significant to the understanding of matrescence was the critically acclaimed 2023 book Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, And Motherhood by UK-based journalist and science writer Lucy Jones. Her look at the enormous changes wrought by early motherhood helped ignite important dialogue about the messy realities of this period, not just among new mums desperate to be seen, but also within academic circles.

This growing awareness comes at a time when the US$6.8 trillion (S$8.8 trillion) wellness economy is more willing to engage with women’s health than ever before. Just a year ago, it started focusing on menopause, a once-taboo subject that has gone mainstream, opening up a significant opportunity for commercial gain.

An estimated 27 million women go through menopause each year globally, according to the National Institutes of Health, but roughly 130 million give birth in the same period, making mums an even bigger market.

In the US, mums receive only one post-partum doctor’s appointment, typically around six weeks after birth, leaving them to figure out the rest on their own. In the UK, mums receive slightly more medical attention, thanks to at-home midwife visits in the first 10 days post-partum, but they are still desperate for more (and longer-term) support.

On Facebook, thousands of “mum groups” are spreading worldwide, each brimming with women seeking support for pelvic floor issues, post-partum hair loss and other concerns.

For many women, vitamins are the most accessible way into this market. Doctors like Abbe Wain, an obstetrician-gynaecologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, consider them useful too. “If pregnancy places major focus on nutrients like iron and folic acid to support foetal development,” she says, “the post-partum period is more about replenishment and supporting maternal recovery.”

For Courtney Hughes, a Charleston stay-at-home mum with a nine-week-old daughter, it was money well spent. “After birth, I felt like I needed more support in my body. I noticed a difference immediately, which I attribute to the vitamins.”

“The consumerism of motherhood is insane,” says Andrea Park, a healthcare communications specialist with a three-month-old baby in Montclair, New Jersey, who says she feels scammed by the aggressive marketing of these products amid an already-expensive season of life.

Still, much of what is new in the matrescence market is not as accessible – or even medically backed – as vitamins and belly oils. It also falls far short of the post-partum care industry that exists in parts of Asia and South America, where new mums can easily find (and afford) live-in support for their first month of child-rearing, inclusive of nutrition counselling and lactation guidance.

One exception are post-partum retreats, which have long been a fixture in South Korea and have finally touched down stateside. But that situates the new-mum wellness landscape in hotel spas around the world rather than in women’s homes. Postnatal recovery retreat options range from individual treatments to pampering multi-day programmes, sometimes costing thousands of dollars.

Adoption is hard to quantify. Shou Sugi Ban House, a female-owned and operated wellness-oriented retreat in Water Mill, New York, introduced a matrescence retreat as a half-day, full-day or overnight experience in November 2025. (The babies are expected to stay home.)

While the hotel declined to share figures on how many women have booked in, Taylor Rose Berry, executive director of the resort, says “guests regularly express a sense of being seen, sometimes for the first time since becoming mothers. The relief of being cared for without needing to care for anyone else, even just for a few hours, is enormous”.

Postnatal and post-partum spa offerings are also newly on the menu at Cheval Blanc Paris, Six Senses Kanuhura in the Maldives and Park Hyatt St Kitts – all of which declined to share or do not yet have figures on how their treatments and retreats have sold. Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong reported an 80 per cent year-over-year increase in postnatal treatments, including postnatal massages and craniosacral therapy, but did not provide exact figures.

In most cases, the treatments target affluent women who live near the resorts and can carve out smaller pockets of time for self-care, rather than those who need to travel or leave their babies behind for days at a time to reset.

The LVMH-owned Cheval Blanc Paris, for instance, courts Parisian mums to its Dior spa through a programme called Haute Motherhood, which was introduced in December 2025. For €2,600 (S$3,860), it bundles and discounts the cost of many treatments that aim to address a new mum’s wellness needs over the course of several weeks: facials, massage and breath-work to support nervous system regulation and pilates to regain abdominal and pelvic strength.

Anne-Louise Pothier, international director of hospitality and spa for Dior Beauty, says the programme was a natural outgrowth of more casual programmes for new mums. In 2024, when the same resort introduced classes that taught Parisian women how to soothe and bond with their infants through massage, she says “many participants expressed a deeper need for self-care to their therapists”. So Haute Motherhood was born.

Many new mums can barely spare more time than it takes to pop a vitamin.

For Zoe Weiner, a New York City-based beauty editor with an eight-week-old daughter, self-care comes in “micro-moments”. That means donning “an LED mask at 3am while doing a middle-of-the-night feeding”, she says.

Julianna Mauriello, a senior account manager and new mum in Fairfield, Connecticut, agrees. “My baby doesn’t take a bottle, so I can’t be away for that many hours,” she says, adding that she would be a prime customer for Shou Sugi Ban House’s half-day retreats if she could simply navigate the scheduling.

But that is not stopping her from thinking about deeper self-care. Instead, she says, she is considering planning a trip to places like Cheval Blanc or Six Senses Kanuhura with her baby and husband, so she can peel away for pampering while knowing her partner is on duty nearby.

The wellness industry’s foray into motherhood has its critics.

For many new mums, shifting the norms of self-care is less about being able to procure pricey products than catalysing the cultural adoption of accurate language, which could better spur social awareness and support during this period.

“The mothers who are most underserved aren’t the ones who need a better product recommendation. They’re the ones who need community, information, and to feel like their experience is valid and shared,” says Michelle Kennedy, the founder of Peanut, a social community for mums.

Peanut and Tommee Tippee, a baby gear company, are running a global campaign that aims to get “matrescence” officially added to the dictionary.

“Your phone treats matrescence like it’s a typo,” Kennedy says.

“If we can’t define an experience, we can’t normalise it or support it. Having the language to describe this life-altering experience would feel incredibly validating for the millions of women navigating it.” BLOOMBERG