Princess Beatrice welcomed her daughter Athena Elizabeth Rose on January 22 this year. The royal baby was born several weeks premature and weighed 2kgs.
Recently, she opened up on the premature birth of her little girl and how the entire process made her humble. "Nothing quite prepares you for the moment when you realise your baby is going to arrive early," she wrote in British Vogue on Sunday, and added, "there's so little control."
The granddaughter of the late Queen Elizabeth II is now the new patron of prematurity charity Borne.
"My second daughter, Athena Elizabeth Rose, was born on 22 January. I learnt so much from this pregnancy journey – the latter stages of which I spent with all of these questions spinning through my mind. Following routine scans we became aware our precious cargo needed close monitoring, and understood we needed to prepare for an early arrival. What I learnt in this process has been humbling: understanding so much more about our remarkable human bodies, but also, more than anything, what we don’t know," she wrote.
Preterm birth occurs when a baby is born before 37 weeks of pregnancy are completed. It is classified into different categories: extremely preterm (before 28 weeks), very preterm (28-32 weeks), and moderate to late preterm (32-37 weeks). Premature babies may face health complications such as breathing difficulties, underdeveloped organs, and a higher risk of infections due to incomplete growth in the womb. Factors like multiple pregnancies, infections, high blood pressure, and lifestyle choices can contribute to preterm labor. Proper prenatal care, a healthy diet, and managing medical conditions can help reduce the risk of preterm birth and improve newborn outcomes.
"so many elements of pregnancy are universal"
"It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’ve come from, so many elements of pregnancy are universal. I’ve had a life that is out of the ordinary, but my joys and fears in pregnancy and motherhood are the same as those experienced by millions of other women around the world," she wrote.
"Like countless other expectant mums, I lay awake in the weeks leading up to birth, trying to monitor each movement of the baby in my tummy and asking myself a thousand times 'What if this happens, or what if that happens?," the 36 year old added.
Princess Beatrice married Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi in 2020. The couple has a tree year old daughter Sienna. Princess Beatrice is ninth in line to the throne and is the eldest daughter of the Duke of York and Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.
