I stayed at a $1,000-a-night postnatal retreat with my newborn baby - here’s why it’s worth it

I was eight months pregnant when I first spoke to Boram Nam, and I was nervous. My husband and I – both Brits – were about to have our first child (well, I was about to have him; my husband was about to stand beside me, clutching my hand and trying not to faint while bodily fluids covered the bed, the walls, and, at one point, his face.)

We were living in New York City, our nearest relatives 4,000 miles away. We’d been to a tranche of “birth preparation” classes. We’d filled out forms about epidurals, contractions and C-sections. We’d learned terms like “fundus” and “placental abruption”. Our health insurance had delivered a scary-looking electric breast pump and a pre-emptive hospital bill for $1,000. But we still didn’t have a clear picture of what the immediate days after the birth of our son would look like. Once the fentanyl pump was taken out of my spine and we’d been wheeled out of the recovery room, what were we supposed to actually do?

Luckily, there’s a place in New York designed specifically to answer these questions: Boram Care, a “postnatal retreat” in the center of Manhattan, just steps away from Central Park. In just a few weeks, I would be checking into the facility. There, we would supposedly learn how to deal with the screaming, confusing little burrito who had come out of my body.

“We’re here to educate you, train you – we’re going to have you go through a baby bootcamp so that you and your husband are more confident,