DORIA WAS STAYING with us, waiting for the baby to come. Neither she nor Meg ever strayed far. None of us did. We all just sat around waiting,
going for the occasional walk, looking at the cows.
When Meg was a week past her due date, the comms team and the Palace began pressuring me. When’s the baby coming? The press can’t wait forever, you know.
Oh. The press is getting frustrated? Heaven forbid!
Meg’s doctor had tried several homeopathic ways to get things moving, but our little visitor was just intent on staying put. (I don’t remember if we ever tried Granny’s suggestion of a bumpy car ride.) Finally we said: Let’s just go and make sure nothing’s wrong. And let’s be prepared in case the doctor says it’s time.
We got into a nondescript people-carrier and crept away from Frogmore without alerting any of the journalists stationed at the gates. It was the last sort of vehicle they suspected we’d be riding in. A short time later we arrived at the Portland Hospital and were spirited into a secret lift, then into a private room. Our doctor walked in, talked it through with us, and said it was time to induce.
Meg was so calm. I was calm too. But I saw two ways of enhancing my calm. One: Nando’s chicken. (Brought by our bodyguards.) Two: A canister of laughing gas beside Meg’s bed. I took several slow, penetrating hits. Meg, bouncing on a giant purple ball, a proven way of giving Nature a push, laughed and rolled her eyes.
I took several more hits and now I was bouncing too.
When her contractions began to quicken, and deepen, a nurse came and tried to give some laughing gas to Meg. 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.
Sorry, I said meekly.
Meg laughed, the nurse had to laugh, and quickly changed the canister.
Meg climbed into a bath, I turned on soothing music. Deva Premal: she remixed Sanskrit mantras into soulful hymns. (Premal claimed she heard her first mantra in the womb, chanted by her father, and when he was dying she chanted the same mantra to him.) Powerful stuff.
In our overnight bag we had the same electric candles I’d arranged in the garden the night I proposed. Now I placed them around the hospital room. I also set a framed photo of my mother on a little table. Meg’s idea.
Time passed. Hour melted into hour. Minimal dilation.
Meg was doing a lot of deep breathing for pain. Then the deep breathing stopped working. She was in so much pain that she needed an epidural.
The anesthetist hurried in. Off went the music, on went the lights. Whoa. Vibe change.
He gave her an injection at the base of her spine.
Still the pain didn’t let up. The medicine apparently wasn’t getting where it needed to go.
He came back, did it again.
Now things both quietened and accelerated.
Her doctor came back two hours later, slipped both hands into a pair of rubber gloves. This is it, everybody. I stationed myself at the head of the bed, holding Meg’s hand, encouraging her. Push, my love. Breathe. The doctor gave Meg a small hand mirror. I tried not to look, but I had to. I glanced, saw a reflection of the baby’s head emerging. Stuck. Tangled. Oh, no, please, no. The doctor looked up, her mouth set in a particular way. Things were getting serious.
I said to Meg: My love, I need you to push.
I didn’t tell her why. I didn’t tell her about the cord, didn’t tell her about the likelihood of an emergency C-section. I just said: Give me everything you’ve got.
And she did.
I saw the little face, the tiny neck and chest and arms, wriggling, writhing. Life, life—amazing! I thought, Wow, it really all begins with a struggle for freedom.
A nurse swept the baby into a towel and placed him on Meg’s chest and we both cried to see him, meet him. A healthy little boy, and he was here.
Our ayurvedic doctor had advised us that, in the first minute of life, a baby absorbs everything said to them. So whisper to the baby, tell the baby your wish for him, your love. Tell.
We told.
I don’t remember phoning anyone, texting them. I remember watching the nurses run tests on my hour-old son, and then we were out of there. Into the lift, into the underground car park, into the people-carrier, and gone. Within two
hours of our son being born we were back at Frogmore. The sun had risen and we were behind closed doors before the official announcement was released…
Saying Meg had gone into labor?
I had a tiff with Sara about that. You know she’s not in labor anymore, I said.
She explained that the press must be given the dramatic, suspenseful story they demanded.
But it’s not true, I said.
Ah, truth didn’t matter. Keeping people tuned to the show, that was the thing.
After a few hours I was standing outside the stables at Windsor, telling the world: It’s a boy. Days later we announced the name to the world. Archie.
The papers were incensed. They said we’d pulled a fast one on them. Indeed we had.
They felt that, in doing so, we’d been…bad partners?
Astonishing. Did they still think of us as partners? Did they really expect special consideration, preferential treatment—given how they’d treated us these last three years?
And then they showed the world what kind of “partners” they really were. A BBC radio presenter posted a photo on his social media—a man and a woman holding hands with a chimpanzee.
The caption read: Royal baby leaves hospital.
