pregnancy

The strict pregnancy rules Meghan Markle must follow as a royal.

Today, Kensington Palace officially announced that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are expecting a child around March 2019.

Announced on the Kensington Royal Instagram just minutes ago, the palace wrote: “Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Sussex is expecting a baby in the Spring of 2019.”

“Their Royal Highnesses have appreciated all of the support they have received from people around the world since their wedding in May and are delighted to be able to share this happy news with the public,” they added.

According to The Sun, there are a strict set of rules they will have to follow.

The gender is secret. 

Prior to the birth of Prince Louis, royal fans contemplated his gender. Would he be a prince? Or would Princess Charlotte be getting a little sister? There were also rumours that the Duke and Duchess themselves waited until birth to see what gender their child would be.

Travelling overseas is forbidden. 

During Kate Middleton’s three pregnancies, she made several public appearances. She attended hospitals to speak and visited museums for openings, but she didn’t travel abroad.

Of course there was one exception, when Kate Middleton accompanied Prince Harry to Norway and Sweden earlier this year, during her pregnancy with Prince Louis.

During their trip, Kate attended a dinner at the palace and visited Karolinska Institute to discuss mental health challenges in Sweden. While her trip was important, it wasn’t strenuous, and with some of the best medical systems in the world in Scandinavia, the pregnant Duchess was in good hands.

There are strictly no baby showers. 

The best part of having a kid is the baby shower, right? Apparently not. According to Victoria Arbiter, ABC News Royal Expert, baby showers are not allowed in the royal family.

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“[There’s an] added pressure that they are clearly very wealthy, and a lavish baby shower would be seen as highly inappropriate,” Arbiter told ABC.

“There’s nothing they can’t go out and buy themselves.”

There are a lot of people behind-the-scenes. 

When the royals give birth, they are in incredibly good hands. Several, good hands, in fact.

According to the Daily Mail, during Kate Middleton’s birth to George and Charlotte, there was “two obstetricians, three midwives, three anaesthetists, four theatre staff, two special care baby unit staff, four paediatricians, one lab technician (in case of blood tests and the like) and three to four hospital managers.”

That is 22 people on hand, and that’s not even including the woman giving birth or the baby.

There is one person who needs to know first. 

Yes, you guessed correctly. The Queen of England is the first person to find out when a royal baby is born. However, according to the BBC, once the family knows about the birth a royal aide takes a note to the to Buckingham Palace, where the world will find out if it’s a boy or a girl. After that, the news is posted on social media.

The baby has to have many names. 

If there’s one thing the Royals are good at, it’s giving their children many names and titles. Princess Charlotte has three names, Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, as does Louis, whose full name is Louis Arthur Charles, and Prince George whose full name is George Alexander Louis.

It turns out pregnancy is a little different when you’re royal, but here’s hoping Meghan still gets to eat peanut butter out of the tub.