The Fourth Trimester Postnatal Retreat offers luxury TLC to parents adapting to their new bundle of joy.
The Fourth Trimester Retreat gives new parents a chance to recharge at The Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. Nurse practitioner and Falls Church resident Megan Francis thinks new moms deserve a lot more rest, care and support than most get after giving birth. To help them through the postpartum weeks, she and her husband, Brent Boroff, have introduced the posh Fourth Trimester Postnatal Retreat.
Fourth Trimester arranges for families to spend at least three nights at The Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., There, guests will enjoy postnatal pampering such as massages and customized cuisine. Think lean proteins, veggies and all things warm, which promotes healing, says Francis, who became a mom herself six months ago.
“We’re basing our model off of Asian cultures—South Korea, China—where women actually go into a period of confinement for an entire month, and they are not expected to do anything,” she says. “Everyone helps with the baby. It’s all this time for mothers to relax and recharge. Because I will tell you from experience, childbirth really does take a lot out of you.”
Megan Francis and Brent Boroff with their daughter, Palmer (Photo by Elyse Cosgrove / Torch Pictures)
Francis works with families to customize their experience. Available services include baby care classes, meetings with lactation consultants, infant CPR courses and support from a perinatal mental health counselor. Clients can also arrange for round-the-clock baby care.
“We just want to make sure that families are set up to go home and feel really good and confident about taking care of their little one, while also taking care of themselves,” says Francis, who also owns NM Aesthetics, a med spa in Ballston. “We recommend just coming straight to us from the hospital before going home. That way, we can really support you in any way that we can. However, we’ve gotten a lot of interest about people coming two months postpartum, three months postpartum, just to get a little bit of a break.”
How Fourth Trimester Postnatal Retreat Was Founded
Francis built her Fourth Trimester network of helpers through her work as a nurse. Since 2010, she has worked in a variety of settings, including an intensive care unit, wound care and home care. She opened the med spa after earning her nurse practitioner certification in 2018.
“My ethos has always been to help people,” she says. “I got into skincare because regular health care, with all the death and dying, does take a part of your soul. It really does. It wears on you.”
Then, she had a rough pregnancy. “I had a cough for seven months, and I have really bad asthma,” Francis says. “But when you’re pregnant, you really can’t take medicine. And my ribs were knocked out of place. I actually had to do acupuncture and dry needling multiple times in a week just to function.”
While at home on bedrest, she came across TikTok videos about postnatal retreats. “There is one located in New York, and I said, ‘Wow, I need to go there,’ and [then] I’m thinking, ‘Why do I have to go all the way to New York? We need this here,’ ” Francis says.
She reached out to the Watergate because of its status as a five-star, quintessential D.C. hotel. “Foggy Bottom is awesome if you want to walk around or you can even go to a show,” she says. “We will take care of your little ones. I just thought it was a perfect location and accessible to all of us in Northern Virginia.”
For families who like the idea of Fourth Trimester’s services but would rather skip the hotel stay, Francis also offers “4T at Home,” with virtual and in-person consultations.
