The Wellness Industry Finds Its Next Target: New Moms

The postpartum period has typically been a poorly understood time for many women — and for the medical community at large

Bloomberg —When Jasmine Hamilton, a labor 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 moms. But what she didn’t expect, she says, is how becoming a parent “completely shifted how I show up for myself, especially when it comes to my health.”

The postpartum 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 isn’t 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 multiday retreats aimed at new moms are a growing business. 

Matrescence Goes Mainstream 

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 our 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 moms desperate to be seen, but also within academic circles. 

This growing awareness comes at a time when the $6.8 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’s 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 moms an even bigger market. In the US, moms receive only one postpartum doctor’s appointment, typically around six weeks after birth, leaving them to figure out the rest on their own. In the UK, moms receive slightly more medical attention thanks to at-home midwife visits in the first 10 days postpartum, but they’re still desperate for more (and longer-term) support. On Facebook alone, thousands of “mom groups” are spreading across cities and communities worldwide, each brimming with women seeking support for pelvic floor issues, postpartum hair loss and a range of other concerns.

For many women, vitamins are the most accessible way into this market. Doctors like Abbe Wain, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist 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 fetal development,” she says, “the postpartum period is more about replenishment and supporting maternal recovery.” 

For Courtney Hughes, a Charleston stay-at-home mom with a nine-week-old daughter, it was money well spent. “After birth I felt like I needed more support in my body,” she says. “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 in Montclair, New Jersey, who says she constantly feels scammed by the aggressive marketing of these products amid an already-expensive season of life.

Retreats for New Moms

Still, much of what’s new in the matrescence market isn’t as accessible — or even medically backed — as vitamins and belly oils. It also falls far short of the postpartum care industry that exists in parts of Asia and South America, where new moms can easily find (and afford) live-in support for their first month of child-rearing, inclusive of nutrition counseling and lactation guidance. One burgeoning exception are postpartum retreats, which have long been a fixture in South Korea and have finally touched down stateside. But that situates the new-mom wellness landscape in hotel spas around the world rather than in women’s homes. Postnatal recovery retreat options range from individual treatments to pampering multiday programs, sometimes costing thousands of dollars. 

Adoption so far 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 postpartum 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 don’t yet have figures on how their treatments and retreats have sold. Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong reported an 80% year-over-year increase in postnatal treatments, including postnatal massages and craniosacral therapy, but didn’t 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 women 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 moms to its Dior spa through a program called  Haute Motherhood , which was introduced in December 2025. For €2,600 ($ 3,036), it bundles and discounts the cost of many treatments that aim to address a new mom’s wellness needs over the course of several weeks: facials, massage, Reiki , breathwork 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 program was a natural outgrowth of more casual programs for new moms. In 2024, when the same resort introduced classes that taught Parisian women how to soothe and bond with their infants through massage, Pothier says “many of the participants expressed a deeper need for self-care to their therapists.” So Haute Motherhood was born.

A Simpler Place to Start

Many new moms can barely spare more time than it takes to pop a vitamin. For Zoe Weiner, a New York City-based beauty editor with an 8-week-old daughter, self-care comes in “micro-moments.” That means donning “an LED mask at 3 a.m. while doing a middle-of-the-night feeding,” she explains. 

Julianna Mauriello, a senior account manager and new mom 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’d be a prime customer for Shou Sugi Ban House’s half-day retreats if she could simply navigate the scheduling.

But that’s not stopping her from thinking about deeper self-care. Instead, she says, she’s considering planning a trip to a property 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 moms, shifting the norms of self-care is less about being able to procure pricey products than catalyzing 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 and CEO of Peanut, a social community for moms. 

Peanut and Tommee Tippee, a baby gear company, are running a global #MakeMatrescenceMainstream campaign that aims to get “matrescence” officially added to the dictionary. Its tagline, splashed across full-page ads in the New York Times and on Instagram posts that have racked up some 8 million views, reads: “IDGAF is in the dictionary, matrescence isn’t.”

“Your phone treats matrescence like it’s a typo,” Kennedy says. “If we can’t define an experience, we can’t normalize it or support it. Having the language to describe this life-altering experience would feel incredibly validating for the millions of women navigating it.”