Introducing Blissful Beginnings: The Dubai-Based Postpartum Retreat That Needs To Be On All New Mothers’ Radars
Founder and CEO Sandrine Chaker tells Bazaar how her own challenging post pregnancy journey inspired her to help other new mothers
Companies in the UAE are experts in hospitality and care, they generally think of everything when it comes to comfort and support but when mum-of two, Sandrine Chaker found herself struggling with postpartum anxiety she saw a huge gap in the market. Wanting to help other women who might find themselves in her position, Sandrine, who has a three-year-old daughter and two-year-old son, decided to take matters into her own hands and last October she launched Blissful Beginnings, the postpartum retreat where new mothers can go after giving birth to receive around the clock care from experts.
It’s a care option that Sandrine, who worked in finance for two decades, wished had been there when she gave birth. “I was essentially pregnant two years in a row and yes it was a beautiful journey, but I felt overwhelmed by the whole experience,” she admits. “I am a very ambitious and hard working woman, I managed hundreds of millions of dollars in banks, I was used to getting prepared and I did everything I could pre-birth. I attended antenatal classes, I read books, I really wanted to be ready, yet I was unprepared for how hard postpartum was. There was a big gap between my expectations and the reality. They was a feeling of failure.”
Sandrine is honest in explaining that despite having her nanny, her mother’s help over the first few weeks after giving birth and her husband’s paternity leave, she found things difficult. “I felt that I didn’t know how to take care of my baby. I was scared of harming my baby. So I felt other people would be able to do a better job than me because I didn’t feel empowered at all throughout the journey. There were so many ups and downs; being needy then extremely happy and then crying in my shower thinking ‘what did I get myself into?’”
Sandrine was in need of professional emotional support at the very least but the kind of help she wanted was unavailable. “I didn’t want any other mums to go through the rough patch I was going through, but studies show that 95 per cent of women report inadequate and unsuitable support after giving birth.” As she started feeling better, Sandrine decided to find solutions for some of the challenges.
“Essentially, postpartum care is very much focused on childcare, so when you’ve been discharged from the hospital, you return home to the nurse or the nanny, but there isn’t much to support a mothers recovery after birth,” she explains of the blind spot that she had discovered through her own experience. “Other cultures in Asia and in the US were doing much better than the GCC region, they have postnatal retreats and millions of women are transitioning through these type of facilities after being discharged from the hospital, they talk about how smooth the transition into motherhood was and how empowered they felt.”
Sandrine, who is of Lebanese heritage, decided it was her duty to make the same sort of smooth transition accessible to women in the GCC. “We have families with a lot of children, and women do deserve some care after childbirth, it’s critical and very important, not only for their long term health care but for the connection with their newborn and the happiness in their marriage, so this is why we provided the retreats.”
The Blissful Beginnings retreats are available for mothers with babies from newborn to 12 months and can be designed for the whole family, which can include everyone from older siblings as well as grandparents and relatives. The stays are at two of Dubai’s most loved luxury hotels and the rooms and suites come complete with cribs, baby bouncers, bottles, diapers and everything new parents need so they can turn up with very little.
The VIP retreat which is housed in exclusive suites at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Jumeirah comes with 24-hour care from experts, with all-inclusive prices starting at around Dhs5,500 a night, and in an attempt to make the services financially accessible, the all-inclusive Deluxe retreat rooms at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Dubai Creek, that come with 12-hour care from experts start at Dhs3,500 a night. Retreats are bespoke and designed after a consultation with the mother-to be and can be four, five or seven nights in length, although Sandrine has also accommodated a 40-day stay.
The concept is built around five pillars that support the mother: “The first pillar is emotional counselling and support, the second is related to holistic wellness therapies which range from specific postpartum massages to energy healing, belly binding and therapy,” explains Sandrine. “The third pillar is nutrition counselling to get your body re-energised and and back on track, then there’s lactation and breastfeeding and finally, the fifth pillar is about baby care support.”
Sandrine carefully handpicked the experts that work across the two venues. “It’s an international team of specialists with at least 10 years experience in their respective fields, they come from the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and they are multilingual. I wanted them to deliver our services in the mother tongue of our clients.” And as well as the therapies and services available at the retreats, parents have the option to continue their journey when they return home, booking therapies and services to be done in their own space.
Blissful Beginnings has quickly grown from what Sandrine initially described as a ‘passion project’ into a successful business within the UAE which she is now looking to expand across the GCC.“We have already accepted guests from both Greece and Saudi Arabia so it’s a natural next step for the business.” Future plans include moving into Qatar and Kuwait as well – worldwide domination seems to be guaranteed for this powerhouse.
For more information visit blissfulbeginnings.ae
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s May 2024 issue