Theresa Bloom would have given her right arm for a few days of total rest and relaxation after she gave birth to her last child 15 months ago.
Even though husband Karl gamely pitched in when mother and baby came home from the hospital, the phone rang, the friends dropped in, the duties of running a bed and breakfast kept cropping up, and the three older kids needed mothering.It was at that point an idea clicked in Bloom's exhausted brain: "Why not combine her experience running a bed and breakfast with her skills as a registered nurse and give other new mothers a break?
Her fatigue-fueled idea is about to take shape in the Storks Nest, a one-of-a-kind bed and breakfast inn for new mothers and their babies. It's an idea that Bloom and her eight-person Storks Nest board of directors hope will catch on across the country and help to solve the costly and controversial dilemma of hospital stays for new mothers.
When the Storks Nest bed and breakfast is up and running next spring, mothers will be able to get away from it all by going directly from the hospital to the inn. They will spend two to five days there with quiet time to rest and bond with their infants. If needed, they will also have the staff help with new baby care. The staff will not be medical personnel but will be trained to handle emergencies.
As Bloom envisions it, the mothers will not be bothered by ringing phones or visitors trooping in and out: "Only fathers and siblings will be allowed to visit.
They will have the kind of extended recuperation period that new mothers used to get in hospital stays - minus the hassles. Since the inn won't be a medical facility, there won't be any wake-up medical checks in the middle of the night, no tests and no "sick room" atmosphere.
"A hospital is not a relaxing environment," Dr. David West said. "It's a place for sick people to get therapy."
West, who is Bloom's family physician and a newly appointed legislative committee head on the board of the American Academy of Family Physicians, is a director for the nonprofit Storks Nest corporation and one of its most ardent promoters.
"In this hustle-bustle society we don't take time out for recovery and bonding after birth," West said. "The importance of those few days of life is overwhelming. There is a measurable difference in babies who have just 16 more hours of bonding."
West and Bloom said that period is important for all mothers, but particularly for young mothers with no baby-care experience and no social support structure.
They don't get much help during their hospital stay because hospitals have been pushed to get women out ever earlier after giving birth to cut costs. In a backlash, federal legislation has been proposed which would allow every new mother in the country to stay in the hospital a day longer. The estimated price tag of just one extra day for all mothers is $1.3 billion.
At $125 a night, and mother and baby could stay at the bed and breakfast for several nights for less than half the cost of a single's stay in the hospital.
West said he has a dream of this unique idea growing into a corporate-sponsored network of similar new-mother bed and breakfasts - akin to the Ronald McDonald houses that offer shelter for parents of hospitalized kids in a number of cities.
"I hope a lot of women may not have so many problems with exhaustion and postpartum depression because of this," he said.