An inside source is telling Page Six that Meghan Markle is planning a home birth for her second child, revealed to be a baby girl during that jaw-dropping Oprah interview. Due in early summer, Markle hopes to welcome her daughter at the gorgeous $14.5 million estate in Montecito, Calif., that she and Prince Harry bought last year after quitting their duties with the royal family.
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“Meghan’s plan was to have a home birth with Archie, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans,” a source told Page Six of Markle’s dreams of delivering Archie at Frogmore Cottage, the home she shared with Harry in England, with a midwife team. “In the end, her doctors advised her to go to hospital, and all she was interested in was about delivering Archie safely.”
Because Archie was overdue by a week, Markle had to adjust her birth plan. Instead, she went to London’s Portland hospital, where she gave birth on May 6, 2019, with Harry by her side.
Home births are not unusual for celebrities these days, with everyone from Gigi Hadid to Ashley Graham welcoming their babies at home. Markle’s royal family member Zara Tindell recently had a home birth as well, although unplanned. The eldest granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II give birth to her third child, son Lucas Phillip, on her bathroom floor!
Choosing a home birth is also becoming more popular these days due to hospital COVID-19 restrictions on how many people are allowed to be with the laboring parent, as well as concerns about potential exposure to the virus in a hospital setting. Of course, there are concerns with home birth safety as well. While we’ve all heard the stories about parents giving birth to healthy babies on their own in their bathtubs and cars, your first priority when you choose a home birth is to find a qualified professional. Certified midwives are trained in every possible safety procedure necessary to ensure the health of you and your baby.
“My job is not to make sure they have a home birth,” Tanya Wills, a licensed midwife and board-certified women’s healthcare nurse practitioner in New York City, told SheKnows. “My job is to make sure that if they can have a home birth, they want to have a home birth, and it’s safe, we can get them at home. And my job is that if it’s not safe for them to be at home, to know 100 percent how to make that call and be able to bring them into a terrific hospital setting, where they’re going to be comfortable.”
As we learned in their interview, Oprah lives just down the road from where Markle is planning to give birth to baby number two. Is there any chance Oprah has been secretly training as a midwife so she can help deliver the first royal baby born in the United States?! Now that would be must-see TV.
Childbirth is nothing like in the movies, as these beautiful photos show.
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