Would you use this postpartum service?

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I'm thinking to start up a business offering a postpartum wellbeing service. I lived in the middle east + N Africa for several years and the women there have a 40 day rest period postpartum, where they get special food made for them with certain ingredients that are high in protein and nutrients that nourish and 'warm' the body. This is mostly in the form of several types of soups. I'm an experienced mother of 5 DC who are older now. I have a masters in legal field.

Package 1: A week worth of soup (7 soups) delivered to your door. You could select which type of soups, day 1 (and possibly 2) would be fresh, the remaining ones frozen.

Cost, Inc delivery £35

Package 2: wellbeing visits, where I could supervise baby and existing children whilst mum sleeps/bathes/rests. And/or does a 'wellbeing clean', so a surface clean/tidy just to make room looks more presentable, dishes washed, maybe put a wash on etc.

Cost: £16.50 per hour

Package 3: Home from Hospital morning: on morning of discharge I visit your home to change bed sheets, do surface clean of bedroom or wherever else mother will sleep.

Cost: £16.50 per hour. A maximum of 3 hours at a time.

Please give me any feedback and whether you think there will be a market for this.

God I can’t imagine anything worse than giving birth and then being stuck on a soup diet. 🤣 assuming I can bf and so will be doing all the night feeds and not getting much sleep, dh will be cooking me full meals every night and also sorting my breakfasts and lunches and feeding them to me if necessary. He is well aware his payment for not being the one to be stuck pregnant/dealing with all that rubbish afterwards is that he does everything else for this period. £5 is also pricey when they’re like £3 in Tesco for decent soup.

the rest of it is also stuff my husband would be doing, though I also have a cleaner for a few hours a work (debating if I want her in the house when I’m newly post partum and probably struggling). I can see it being useful though if you have a terrible partner and no family help.

Thanks for all the feedback, really appreciate it 💐

I would have loved most of your packages. Agree 2) & 3) could be combined. I think helping with house stuff would also be a bit hit. But remember crawling around wiping blood from around loo etc.. as didn’t want my parents or in laws seeing it and my husband said I was being fussy. Same with dishwasher/laundry loading. I had no time or energy to prep food or shop for it.
I did have a doula for birth but she didn’t want to come over to help post partum or quite feeding support. I ended up paying my lovely cleaner just to hold the baby and be a kind sort of mum to me- my parents were working and lived quite far away. I should have hired her more often so I could shower etc. in retrospect.
As others have said soup is probably a trickier sell as it’s tough to eat one handed whilst bfing on a sofa. Could you adapt it into a stew if people preferred?

Oh and I vomited everywhere both times when in established labour and before I got to midwife led unit. So had to clean bathroom and sort stinky laundry when we got home. Not sure if you would want to deal with that kind of thing? Reckon you could charge a fair whack more than £16.50 ph though.

Ah here... surely your husband could have sorted the vomit and sick laundry before you got home after giving birth?

How is it so cheap?

There are people who want this but i wouldn’t want anyone fussing, i was quite capable of going to the supermarket and cooking too. I wouldn’t have wanted soup either, I wanted something more substantial after giving birth - carb heavy.

I would love it. My North African MIL looked after me after I gave birth even when she didn’t have to. I will never forget that, my mum did a fly by visit once she had finished work. Didn’t see her again for weeks.

both times we were in an MLU down the road only for a few hours after baby was born ( London, September, very high demand for beds) so we came home with baby at same time. But yes, I am astonished in retrospect that he didn’t think to help and that I didn’t demand it.

It's something I'm very passionate about, I had 2 c/s close together and would have loved something like this. After my time living abroad It really opened my eyes to how the pp period was treated as convalescence, where the mother needs to be nourished (if she wants that obviously). It would be a side money earner, I just want to be covered for my time and want to keep it affordable so it's an option for 'ordinary' people. It's not intended to make me wealthy. I consider it a valuable act of service.

I don't live near a ME community, I think those interested in the soups would be the 'green' parents.

The soups are probably more stew like than soup, they are heavy with legumes, grains and oats.

The white British attitude is generally very much get on with it. My DM booked a day off work when my dc1 was born for "bonding time" for her and the baby 🤣. I was making her cups of tea.

I think the best niche might be to offer an all-around service that includes food, rest, cleaning…like a ‘new mum’ package designed to make life easier and improve the women’s wellbeing. I agree with PP that I’d want to meet you first to see how we gel. You could go up with the price for a wellness package.

The fact you don’t want to make a living wage from it helps but I think you do need to think again about your costings.

Not sure where you live but realistically how many hours a week do you think you could be engaged for. When you deduct food hygiene, insurance and DBS start up costs, how much do you need to earn every year to cover your annual fixed costs? You are effectively on a zero hours contract but with high fixed overheads so you’ll need to price this at break even levels based on modest take up and hope you can build a bigger following over time. But it’s not a very scalable business idea so it could be hard to get the numbers to work. I’d be very surprised if £16.50 is a break even hourly rate

Also one thing I’m not sure if you factored in is the time and cost of travelling to peoples house.

No. I don’t have children, nor am I planning any yet, but these are my thoughts.

The cheap price makes me think it’s someone who’s not really qualified. I wouldn’t be happy with a random person supervising my children without any qualifications.

I don’t think soup is the most nourishing thing out there. I’d rather something hearty - stews, cottage pie, casseroles etc.

I wouldn’t want a stranger coming in to clean my house either. Seems like you’re basically allowing women to pay for you to take the place of the father.

It’s a lovely thought but I didn’t like anyone that wasn’t immediate family holding my newborn so I definitely wouldn’t want a stranger with no relevant qualifications looking after them.
For the cleaning, I would rather pay a dedicated cleaner.

I do think a meal service specifically aimed at postpartum mothers could be an idea if you expanded what meals you offered. I wouldn’t go for it personally but I have friends that definitely would

There are lots of women who for various reasons don't have their partner at home to do these things.
Those saying about qualifications - what sort of qualifications would you expect someone who is supervising children in their own home to have? Childminders, who have sole access, don't have qualifications, not do most nannies.

Every childminder and nanny I’ve ever seen or used had qualifications specifically relating to child care, including first aid training.

As a mothers help your role would be to look after the children while the mother was still in the house but if she’s (for example) in the shower then yes I would absolutely expect you to know how to handle a choking incident or similar.

I would expect level 3 childcare qualifications, as well as first aid qualifications. At such a low price point there would be red flags regarding insurance to me, too.

Honestly no I wouldn’t. That much soup doesn’t appeal plus I have DH and other kids to consider- we want to eat as a family. I pay my cleaner to clean, if she didn’t do the bedsheets DH would and I’ve never found getting a shower or a nap much of an issue tbh. Perhaps I was fortunate to get good sleepers, plus DH was also willing to do his share but if those didn’t apply and I was going to go down the night nanny route I’d want qualified, references and a paediatric first aid certificate. By qualified I mean childcare diploma, maternity practitioner course or equivalent, if not an actual qualified midwife who is no longer working in the field.

I guess that I can see the appeal for some people but I never felt the need to treat the post partum period as a convalescence myself. I was excited, despite having a c-section, to do things as a family. I remember lots of lovely long pub lunches in the first couple of weeks when DH was on paternity leave. I didn’t really want to be sat at home, eating nourishing soup. I wanted a rare steak and glass of wine!

Basic childcare qualifications, paediatric first aid and insurance. Like I could just ask the neighbours or a random off the street to hold my baby in my house if that's the view you are going with...?

Some childminders don't have qualifications agreed, but they have years of experience and aren't minding a literal newborn when a mother is in a vulnerable time.

Would you clean my house for £16.50 an hour please? I’m 12 years post part but that’s cheaper than any cleaner I’ve had in the past decade!

Soup is my go to lunch in normal circumstances but I haven't had any since my son was born in September as it's a pain to eat with a sleeping baby in your arms. Lunch is the meal I am struggle with most as it's when he is most fussy and sensitive to movement so I am mostly having toast and cereal bars and I eat more sensible breakfasts and evening meals. I have breakfast before baby wakes up and my partner makes nutritious evening meals.

I think if you were to do some kind of food it would have to be something that doesn't require cutlery and can be eaten warm or cold. Or can be used as an evening meal for both parents

I was in hospital in pregnancy and when I came home I had a freshly made bed by my mum and it finally dawned on me why I hated a made bed as it used to always mean my mum had been in my room. I wouldn't want someone changing my bedding but it is something I do recommend to anyone that is "nesting" before baby arrives.

I have found that there is a lot of family help and support in the first few weeks and it's been you are in a newborn bubble. It has been around 8 weeks that the cracks show for me. My in-laws visited for half term around this point and they gave the downstairs a deep clean which was so helpful. It's been a lot easier to keep on top of things. A surface clean we can manage ourselves

Basic childcare qualifications, paediatric first aid and insurance plus an enhanced DBS check certificate. Possibly some sort of nutritional studies if also providing food.