TRENDS | As the appetite for personal pampering expands, the clients themselves are getting smaller. Welcome to the world of baby spas
February 04, 2007

Taking the stress out of being infantile
Jennifer Wells

It's not readily apparent that the spa industry – or the spa behemoth, as it could more properly be labelled – is in need of a growth strategy.

We seem to be full up with destination spas, day spas, water spas, medi-spas (purveyors of Botox and such), hammams (purveyors of steam rooms and such), et cetera.

Chocolate pedicures and BlackBerry hand massages are in. As are "green" spas. Spa residences, in which spa amenities are incorporated into new luxury condominium developments, are suddenly in. Witness the soon-to-be-opened Canyon Ranch Living in Miami Beach, which marries the trademark Canyon Ranch spa brand to upscale condos. As the Canyon Ranch literature says, it's "the ultimate expression of wellness."

Wellness is very in.

So are babies. Celebrity culture has put us on notice (see Britney, Angelina, Katie and, maybe soon, Demi). We should not, therefore, be at all surprised by the blending of two trends. The spa. The baby. Baby spa.

It had to happen.

Naturally, it's happening in California.

"I think we're leading the world," says Jonathan Baker, who opened his Baby Spa in Los Angeles in November, in space adjacent to his already-established Skin Spa.

Baby Spa focuses, says Baker, on the first 18 months of a child's life and offers 25 programs – "hand-picked by me" – to help shape the mind and personality of the baby.

"Each program drives the personality to the next stage," says Baker.

Consider: the baby trance. "We play trance music, which is a beat, like the beat of the heart, over and over ... It's an extension of the baby and the mommy looking into each other's soul." Also available: baby brain awakening ("We play classical music and we use different objects to create motor skills"), baby yoga, baby spa massage ("Baby massage is our staple – that's who we are") and an interesting mélange called Baby Chakra Chi. "We place warm towels on the baby's chakras," says Baker. "And there's some aromatherapy inside the towels ... We do almost a light cranial massage, where you take the energy and kind of move it from head to toe, and we do that when the chakras are open."

Once the baby's chakras are aligned, mommy can then spend her own hour having a fountain-of-youth oxygen facial in the Skin Spa while baby is tended.
"Our motto is, `Together with baby, then mommy in luxury,'" says Baker.

This is a new marketing twist on Skin Spa's focus on couples, for which Baker's motto is, "Alone in luxury, together in romance." But most spas are doing the couples thing. The untapped niche is the baby community, and, to hear Baker tell it, one would be terribly selfish not to embrace it. "You've got to look beyond where you are at the moment and ask yourself where you want your baby to be," he says.

The response? "We've been inundated," he says. Moms are toting in their babies. The media have been toting in their cameras.

Do we spot a trend?

Each year Spa Finder Inc. in Manhattan issues a list of spa trends to watch. Hot for '07: sleep, in which spas employ sleep experts to help counsel clients on achieving nirvana (tip: stop sending e-mails right before bedtime); social spa-ing ("community is the new privacy"); and mommy and baby spas. "I would say one of the most frequent questions I get is, `Where can I go with my children or my baby,'" says Spa Finder president Susie Ellis.

In March, Ellis will address the annual Canadian Spa Industry Conference at the Royal Meridien Hotel on King St. Does it not seem unnecessary to offer spa services for deliciously skinned, limber-bodied, stress-free babies? "A baby needs touch," Ellis says of the benefits of baby massage. "To take a baby for an hour and focus just on that touch. You'd think that could happen at home, but maybe not."

Baby massage in and of itself is not new.

At Sukha Health Spa on Roncesvalles Ave., owner Jennifer Mattar says babies as young as four weeks check in for sessions running 20 minutes to half an hour. With adult accompaniment, of course. Mattar says the benefits include reduced fussiness (think constipation and gas) and better sleep behaviours.

Baby yoga is not new either. At the Ella Centre for Pregnancy and Parenting in Leaside, parent and baby yoga classes are offered, as are baby salsa classes and infant massage. Sara Cumming recently took baby Henry in for his Ella yoga session.

Henry, at 4 1/2 months, is an old hand at the yoga game. Having attended classes for the past 10 weeks, he is now accustomed to the faces mother makes as she perfects her downward dog.

As with Baker's Baby Spa, child care is available at Ella, allowing a parent to enjoy, in peace, personal treatments.

Cumming has availed herself of a one-hour massage while Henry did his thing in the child-care centre. How did that work out? "Heavenly," she says.
But, says Ella founder Amy Halpenny, "We are a parenting centre. We are not a spa."
As a practical matter, most spas would have a difficult time accommodating such issues as, say, squalling, a common baby trait and one not in keeping with the oasis calm of a spa.

And surely there are other considerations: does one want to go to any spa that caters to wee ones, not to mention wee-ing ones? As a spokesperson for one destination spa put it, "This is a place you make babies, not take babies.

This may explain why up until now innumerable spas have instead seized on the "babymoon" – yes, another trend – but stopped short of any services for the actual baby.

The babymoon, if you have not heard, is a last-gasp getaway for expectant moms and often dads. At the spa at Las Ventanas at the tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula (think white sand beaches), the babymoon package includes a maternity massage, anti-fatigue leg compress and "miel de Miraflores" antioxidant wrap.

A silver baby spoon and fork set, crafted by a local artisan, is included in the package. (Las Ventanas also has "dedicated spa butlers" and convertible Mini Coppers for tooting around.)

Closer to home, the far earthier E'Terra Inn near Tobermory, Ont., offers a babymoon package that includes post-natal fitness advice, soaking tubs and an Indian head massage. "It's the only massage that will put me almost right out," says E'Terra's Laurie Adams, who developed her babymoon package because, quite simply, a lot of pregnant women were showing up at her destination spa.

There are, in fact, so many pregnant women out there that the Casa Madrona spa in Sausalito, Calif., bills itself as "America's first destination maternity spa," featuring special treatment masks for pregnant bellies. In with the love. Out with the stress.

A lot of pregnant women were showing up at Jonathan Baker's Skin Spa, too. "I wanted to focus on the mommies," says Baker. The Baby Spa is an obvious extension, helped by plentiful soundproofing between the two operations.

"I always say that parental bonding is the map to the baby's spirit," says Baker, "and that's my quote, you know, for this marketplace."
The spa marketplace is $11 billion (U.S.) and growing. The amount of money that parents will expend on their offspring: incalculable.

Has Jonathan Baker started a trend? Oh, baby, he just might have.