Just five months after their royal wedding in May 2018, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex delighted fans with the news they were expecting their first child.
Behind the scenes, their pregnancy had been filled with little “superstitions” that they believed helped bring them luck, which Prince Harry let slip in his autobiography, Spare.
“We didn’t want to wait. We both wanted to start a family straightaway,” Harry recalled, adding that becoming parents had “always been our main priority.”
At the end of summer 2018, the couple spent time with King Charles at the Castle of Mey in Scotland, where the now-monarch regaled tales of the “selkies” who grant wishes.
“‘Scottish mermaids,’ he said. ‘They took the form of seals and cruised along the shore outside the castle, within a stone’s throw of where we were sitting. So, when you see a seal,’ he advised, ‘you never can tell… Sing to it. They often sing back,'” he said, initially dismissing it as a “fairytale” before they tried it out for themselves.
After spotting seals in the cool waters off the Scottish coast, Harry and Meghan reportedly began to serenade them, but they only responded after “magic” Meghan joined in. Caught up in the moment, Harry decided to jump in the water with them – a detail which left King Charles’ staff “horrified.”
He penned: “A seal opera. Silly superstition, maybe, but I didn’t care. I counted it a good omen. I took off my clothes, jumped into the water, swam to them. Later, Pa’s Aussie chef was horrified.
“He told us that this had been a supremely bad idea, more ill-advised than diving heedlessly into the darkest water of the Okavango. ‘This part of the Scottish coast was teeming with killer whales,’ the chef said, ‘And singing to seals was like calling them to their blood-soaked deaths.'”
Shortly after returning home to Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, Harry and Meghan took a pregnancy test, which came back positive. The royal partly attributed the successful conception to the old wives’ tale, adding: “I thought: ‘Thank you, selkies.'”
Archie’s birth
© GettyPrince Archie was born at London’s Portland Hospital on 6 May 2019. It was reported that the former Suits actress bounced on a pregnancy ball during labour, while Harry tried the nitrous oxide that was meant to be reserved for the mother-to-be.
“When her contractions began to quicken, and deepen, a nurse came and tried to give some laughing gas to Meg,” Harry wrote. “There was none left. The nurse looked at the tank, looked at me, and I could see the thought slowly dawning: ‘Gracious, the husband’s had it all’.”
© GettyMeghan eventually had an epidural, and the new parents managed to quietly exit the hospital with their newborn to return to Frogmore Cottage just two hours after Archie was born.
They are also now parents to Lilibet Diana, who was born at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital on 4 June 2021, after the Duke and Duchess stepped back as senior royals and relocated to the US.
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