If you think that babies couldn't have it better than a “eat, sleep, poop, repeat” life, then you are in for a surprise. The photos from Australia's first spa for babies—Baby Spa Perth—doing the rounds on the internet show a set of adorable babies wearing a tube around their necks, which keeps them afloat, while another set enjoy a relaxing massage.
Baby Spa Perth was launched by entrepreneurial sisters—Anita Yap (32) and Kavita Kumar (34)—in 2016. The spa offers an opportunity to newborns (from two days to six months) and their parents to bond over a unique experience that includes hydrotherapy sessions and special massages for babies. “The Baby Spa is a perfect opportunity for my sister and I to leverage our previous skills sets around children, family and physical therapy,” says Kavita, who has a decade of hands-on experience of working in the health sector both in Australia and the UK.
Baby Spa Perth is the third baby spa in a global franchise established by Laura Sevenus, the mind behind the world's first baby spa in London. For over four decades, Sevenus has been professionally creating safe and beneficial water-based environment for babies.
Anita Yap (left) and Kavita Kumar at Baby Spa Perth
One of the services at Baby Spa Perth, hydrotherapy, includes floatation and gentle exercises in water that, apparently, support the mental and physical development of babies. But seeing your baby being put in a pool of water could be a scary idea for some parents. If you are one of them, then worry not, says Kavita. “The therapists at Baby Spa Perth have a background caring for neonates and experience in infant massage. They also go through an internal training programme to learn the techniques developed by Laura Sevenus,” she says.
For hydrotherapy, the Baby Spa Perth team uses a unique, patented 'bubby' floatation device that supports them and gives them the freedom to gently float and enjoy a range of movements they wouldn’t experience otherwise, if held in hands. Kavita says that the device can support babies up to 25kg. In addition, to create an environment for bonding, throughout the session parents are encouraged to be with their baby at every step, communicating with their child through touch, voice, hearing, eye contact and smell.
The spa offers hydrotherapy for newborns over eight weeks in an ozone-sterilised pool, while babies younger than that get their own pod of purified water. Besides hydrotherapy, the spa also offers infant massages using grape seed oil, which includes gentle exercises.
The idea of launching a baby spa was not just an entrepreneurial decision for the first-generation Australian sisters, born to an Indian father and an Italian mother. Before relocating to Perth and opening the spa, Kavita had lived in London for over 10 years. It was there, after a rather complex birth of her son, Nadal, that she was first introduced to Baby Spa London through her mother’s group. "It seemed like an ideal place for my son and me to visit. My husband and I took our son there when he was four days old and we were really taken by the sense of calm it instilled in all of us, along with Nadal’s instant taking to the water. Together with my sister Anita, we wanted to share this with people of our hometown in Perth and hopefully around Australia."
In an hour-long session, the duration of floatation and massage varies from baby to baby, depending on their reaction to water and massage tolerance. A regular session at the baby spa costs AUD 85 (Rs 4,200 approx). If that sounds costly, then check out the viral photographs of the spa. The look of sheer bliss on the faces of these munchkins will make your heart melt and may even convince you that, perhaps, it's worth it.
As far as the sisters are concerned, Kavita recalls: “Although both Xavier (Anita’s son) and Nadal attended baby spa from the time when they were four days old, Xavier was the first to experience Baby Spa Perth as he was born around the time when we launched it. It was a very busy time for us all and luckily it still is.”
