Unexpected luxury, before baby makes three

Is it a spa? A gym for expectant mothers? A holistic health center? It's a bit of each. And it put together a custom "babymoon" — a pre-birth escape trip — for me to enjoy in mid-April, including massages, prenatal yoga and a birthing hypnosis lesson. For out-of-towners like me, B&P pairs everything with the accommodations at the Mountain Home Inn.

Barefoot & Pregnant was founded about 18 months ago by Stacy Denney and is part of a budding babymoon trend luring affluent parents-to-be with the promise of a final getaway before a little one changes life forever. Jonathan and I already have a little one, 2-year-old Theodore, so this was a final fling for the three of us.

Other babymoon packages — such as Once in a Babymoon at the Beside Still Waters Farm in Willits, the Last Big Hurrah at Bodega Bay Lodge & Spa and Stress-Free Parents to Be at the Estancia La Jolla Hotel & Spa — focus more on relaxation and romance.

Barefoot & Pregnant looked as though it combined a romantic escape and a growing array of holistic healthcare services for mothers-to-be.

Packages, although convenient, have their drawbacks — often the price. The three-day Expecting the Best package at Barefoot & Pregnant seemed overpriced at $1,100, which did not include airfare or car rental. I booked the hotel and treatments à la carte, which worked; we got exactly what we wanted and we were able to do it for hundreds of dollars less.

The services and classes were all excellent — worth their price. Barefoot & Pregnant staff members were extremely helpful, setting up a private childbirth education class, offering to find baby-sitters and recommending kid-friendly restaurants and parks in the area.

B&P was a long and fairly complicated drive from the hotel, but given the unique beauty of the Mountain Home Inn, I understood the choice. Perched on a crest of Mt. Tamalpais, the inn was the last building on the road before the entrance to the state park. It felt like the end of the world.

Our room was small but well-appointed, with a balcony that opened out to the sky. Two old Adirondack chairs beckoned us outside. A gift basket was filled with lavender lotions and ginger-flavored Preggie Pops, designed to combat nausea. (They worked. Before leaving, I bought as many as I could fit into my purse.) On the bed awaiting my big, bulbous body was every pregnant woman's fantasy — a huge body pillow.

The most wonderful feature of the inn, though, is that you can hike out the front door straight into the primeval forest of Mt. Tamalpais State Park. Less than a mile away as the crow flies is Muir Woods National Monument. The inn keeps a binder of information on hikes ranging in difficulty from easy to hard (three to 12 miles), with photocopies for hikers to take with them on the trail.

The family hits the trail

Hiking is one fun thing that a 33-weeks-pregnant woman can still do, so it felt like heaven to have such a wealth of options.

Twice we stuffed Theo into his baby backpack and headed into the hills. It was spectacular, and it was all ours. We hiked into a stand of redwoods, up the mountain. Wild irises bloomed on the trail. Moss-covered bridges crossed roaring waterfalls. The air smelled like wet rocks and dirt and trees and spring. We never saw a soul.

Our trip dates didn't match any of Barefoot & Pregnant's scheduled childbirth classes, so Denney set up a private session for us with Susan Lawler.

Lawler is a registered obstetrical nurse and the founder of Moms on the Move, which leads childbirth, infant CPR and breastfeeding classes throughout in Marin County, including many at B&P.

Conventionally trained, Lawler became interested in hypnosis for birth after seeing a series of women in labor arrive at the hospital surprisingly calm. All credited hypnosis. Still skeptical, she took a course in the method and conducted her own informal test with her first class. Three of her first 10 students were so relaxed during labor that they arrived at the hospital fully dilated. Now she recommends the course to women interested in natural childbirth.

'You are getting sleepy …'

I think my husband was disappointed: There was no swinging pocket watch, and he was not going to learn how to control me with secret Svengali-like powers. It seemed more like a slow mental reprogramming, something akin to visualization exercises in sports.

"A big part of hypnosis is getting rid of fear," Lawler explained. "Hypnosis taps into the subconscious. It clears out the negative and replaces it with the positive."