Karwai Tang/WireImage(LONDON) — Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, is taking yet another step in redefining the role of the wife of a member of Britain’s royal family.
Meghan, 37, does not appear to have any plans to pose for the traditional newborn-holding photo-op outside the hospital after she gives birth to her first child.
Instead, Meghan and Prince Harry plan to make an announcement about their child’s birth only after they’ve celebrated “privately as a new family,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement Thursday.
Buckingham Palace has also not revealed where Meghan plans to give birth.
The privacy around the delivery is in contrast to Meghan’s sister-in-law Duchess Kate and her mother-in-law, the late Princess Diana.
Kate and Diana, who both gave birth to heirs to the British throne, delivered all their children at the Lindo Wing at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.
Throngs of press and well-wishers, and their cameras, camped out before the deliveries and were also there to greet Kate and Diana when they stepped outside – with makeup and heels on — to pose with their newborns just hours after giving birth.
Meghan, in contrast, whose baby will be the seventh in line to throne, is making a different decision about where, when and how the public will first see her child. And she is keeping those plans between herself and Harry and their closest aides.
“It’s great that she’s making right off the bat what feels like the best decision for herself and her child,” said Lauren Smith Brody, author of “The Fifth Trimester,” the bestselling book about returning to work as a mother. “She’s saying, ‘I’m in charge. I’ll be the one to design my motherhood and public role and no one else.'”
Brody, a mother of two, now works with companies to help them support and retain new moms in the workplace. She said Meghan is making a smart move in defining expectations right off the bat about her maternity leave, for which the royal family does not have any policy or guidelines.
“In a sense her public role is a job, so she’s saying, ‘I’m not working when my kid is one day old. I’m on maternity leave,'” Brody said. “Very often the first parent who needs something [like maternity leave] is the one who helps design what is going to be offered as a benefit to everybody. You’re actually helping to modernize the workplace and make it more fair for everybody.”
“I think Meghan is embracing that and I really applaud her,” Brody said.
Buckingham Palace’s announcement that Meghan and Harry “have taken a personal decision to keep the plans around the arrival of their baby private” comes a few weeks after a baby products company, Fridababy, placed an open letter to Meghan in The New York Times.
The letter, addressed to “the royal mom-to-be,” asked Meghan to skip the post-birth photo op outside the hospital in hopes of creating a dialogue around what women really go through after giving birth.
“Sure your blowout will be perfect for your hospital step photo-op, but people will be opining on all the wrong things—like how soon you will fit into your pre-baby wardrobe—instead of having an honest conversation about what women go through during birth or immediately thereafter,” read the March 26 letter, written by Fridababy CEO Chelsea Hirschhorn.
“Skip the pomp and circumstance of the baby parade. Let the headlines instead read: “Prince Brings Royal Baby Out Because Mom Is in Bed Sitting on a Pack of Ice,” Hirschhorn also wrote in the letter.
Mothers weighed in with mixed reactions to the letter, with the majority applauding the notion behind the letter, that women should not have to live up to expectations after a major medical feat like childbirth.
“Thank you so much for sharing this and keeping it real for us new mamas out there … it’s so important!!,” wrote one commenter on Fridababy’s Instagram. “I had no idea what to expect and my birth was very hard!! I appreciate this so much!!”
“I was 39 when I had my first of 2, and even though what u say is true and sitting WAS painful for some days, I also felt SO euphoric about my baby that wild horses could not have kept me down!!,” wrote another commenter. “I was proud to be up and focus on this wonder and NOT on my own discomfort, which absolutely paled by comparison!! had I had a hairdresser come to my room I would have done what Kate did!!”
Kate, 37, posed with her third child, Prince Louis, just seven hours after his birth at the Lindo Wing last April. The wife of Prince William wore a red Jenny Packham dress, nylons, heels and fully done makeup and hair when she met photographers outside the hospital holding her third child.
In the United States, where Meghan is from, new moms are more likely to stay in the hospital for at least 48 hours after a vaginal birth and 96 hours after a cesarean birth, with some stays being even longer depending on the delivery.
The world may never know how long Meghan stayed in the hospital after giving birth, and fellow moms like Brody say that is all for the better.
“She’s sending so many good images by not doing what is expected of her,” the author said. “Even if she had posed with huge circles under her eyes and was carrying absorbent underpants and waving them in the air, she’d be taken to task for making it a stunt.”
While Kate and Diana may have faced more pressure, or expectations, because of the time in which they gave birth and their husbands’ and children’s spots in the line of succession, Meghan appears to have taken the option of “opting out,” as Brody calls it, and doing what is best for herself — both mentally and physically – and her family.
The message that should send to all women — most of whom do not have to decide whether to pose for photos in front of the press after childbirth — is that they can do the same, no matter the scale.
“Meghan’s choice sends a message even to a mom who has just had a baby, who is flooded with requests to come and visit, who feels like she has to entertain and has to be looking good and has to have food in the fridge and has to leave the room to nurse the baby if the baby cries,” Brody said. “It says, ‘No, actually let’s let mom and dad decide what is best and what they want in order to be able to succeed in this really, really challenging position.'”
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