Until recently, being a busy pregnant executive in a high-powered New York City job meant putting a career on hold for an extended period of time before the arrival of the baby. Moreover, a high percentage of women executives never returned from maternity leave – or left their job shortly after returning. But that doesn’t have to be the case, thanks to new maternity concierge services that are making it easier for new moms (and moms-to-be) to manage every aspect of their personal and professional lives.
In just the past five years, maternity concierge services in NYC have gone mainstream. The first breakthrough was the 2011 Bravo TV series, “Pregnant In Heels,” which featured the story of Rosie Pope, a London-born maternity concierge who charged $500 per hour to busy and stressed out New York executives. Since that time, workplaces have adopted the maternity concierge concept as a potential workplace perk to hold on to their talented female executives. It’s now completely normal for a maternity concierge to show up on the set of the “Today” show in New York.
And, as the maternity concierge concept has caught on with New York moms, it’s led to a real change in how they are being used. You can think of the services that the maternity concierge provides as being divided into several basic categories.
There are some that fall under the rubric of nanny services, such doing laundry, taking care of light housekeeping, preparing meals, and making sure young toddlers get to where they need to go – schools, doctors or play dates.
And then there are some services that are more along the lines of what you might expect a personal assistant to take care of – scheduling appointments, taking notes during meetings, and making sure that a pregnant executive is able to keep up with a steady stream of corporate commitments nearly up to the date of birth.
Where the real innovation has occurred, though, is with high-end, premium services that are specifically tailored to the unique needs of New York moms. These include helping to set up a designer nursery, planning a baby shower at just the right restaurant, and making sure that moms-to-be are taking advantage of the full range of only-in-New York activities.
The real goal of most maternity concierge services, including those provided by Your Concierge NYC, is to make women feel special during one of the most important moments of their lives. One case in point: there has been a spike in the number of New York women who want to travel to exotic island destinations with their newborn, leaving behind their tiny NYC apartments. To make that a reality, they can use a maternity concierge to plan all the details: booking the flights and rental property, making sure that the destination has everything needed to take care of their children, and generally assisting in making sure that everything goes according to plan.
It’s the same type of service you might expect from a high-end hotel concierge. Just as you wouldn’t give a second thought to asking a concierge at the St. Regis or The Pierre to book an impossible-to-find table at a trendy midtown restaurant, today’s New York moms are taking full advantage of their maternity leave, experiencing unique moments with their newborn while letting someone else take care of all the details.
