Oh, baby! Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are expecting their 2nd child
Little Archie’s days as an solely child will quickly be over! Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are now expecting their second child.
In an announcement on Sunday, Harry and the previous Meghan Markle revealed that one other child royal is on the best way. “We can confirm that Archie is going to be a big brother. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are overjoyed to be expecting their second child,” a spokesperson for the couple said in a statement.
The photographer of the announcement photo, Misan Harriman, a longtime friend of the couple, reflected on Twitter on capturing the moment.
“Meg, I was there at your wedding to witness this love story begin, and my friend, I am honoured to capture it grow,” he wrote. “Congratulations to The Duke and Duchess of Sussex on this joyous news!”
The new addition to the Sussex clan will be the fifth grandchild of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana and the 10th great-grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II.
But for mom and dad, who wed in 2018, baby No. 2 will also be will be “rainbow baby” No. 1. That’s the term used to refer to a child born following a previous miscarriage or neonatal death, and in July of 2020, Meghan and Harry suffered such a loss.
The duchess opened up about it in an op-ed for The New York Times in November, writing that the pregnancy loss they endured brought with it “an almost unbearable grief.”
“Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand,” she wrote. “I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears. Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we’d heal.”
The arrival of the child they’re now expecting will probably play a task in that path towards therapeutic.
It’s additionally potential that child No. 2 would be the final for the royal dad and mom. In an interview within the September 2019 challenge of British Vogue, which was guest edited by Meghan, Harry spoke to Jane Goodall about climate change — a topic he told the conservationist he’d given even more thought to since having a child of his own. But at the mention of children, Goodall playfully warned him, for the sake of the environment, not to have “too many.”
In response, the prince assured they might solely have “two, most!”
Of course, solely time will inform if that prediction holds true.
Harry, 36, and Meghan, 39, didn’t announce a due date.
Until then, prepare for extra maternity fashions, bump cradling and possibly even one other spherical of twin talk. After all, when Meghan was pregnant with their son, whose full name is Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, royal watchers seemed obsessed with every detail — but they weren’t the only ones.
Tabloids additionally fixated on the previous actor throughout her first being pregnant, a degree Harry mentioned in a statement that he made in October 2019, on the identical day it was revealed that Meghan had filed swimsuit towards one publishing group.
“Unfortunately, my spouse has change into one of many newest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns towards people with no thought to the implications — a ruthless marketing campaign that has escalated over the previous yr, all through her being pregnant and whereas elevating our new child son,” he wrote on the time.
He went on to clarify that he feared the repercussions if the identical kind of unfavorable protection continued. But it was he and Meghan who had a shock of their personal when it appeared there was no relief in sight.
In January of 2020, the couple introduced that they have been stepping back from life as senior royals.
“Once Meghan and I have been married, we have been excited, we have been hopeful, and we have been right here to serve,” Harry explained in a speech days after their resolution was revealed. “For those reasons, it brings me great sadness that it has come to this.”
“This” being the occasion that was quickly dubbed “Megxit” — whereby Harry and Meghan traded within the high-profile lives of lively royals for brand spanking new roles that might enable them to spend extra time away from the British media, in their relocated home in California, and nonetheless pursue their charitable passions.
Though Harry and Meghan not use their “royal highness” titles (also referred to as HRH), the prince remains in the British line of succession. Harry is sixth in line to the throne held by his grandmother, which places Archie at seventh and their second child at eighth.
But for right now, the couple isn’t focused on the throne, their titles or the troubling tabloid headlines of the past. Today their attention is on happier headlines — ones about the baby on the way.
Congratulations to Harry and Meghan — and to Archie, too!
