Princess Beatrice is opening up about the “uncertainty” she and her husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, faced when their daughter Athena was born prematurely in January.
“Nothing quite prepares you for the moment when you realize your baby is going to arrive early. There’s so little control,” Beatrice, 36, wrote in a Vogue UK essay published on Sunday, March 23. “‘Will she arrive healthy? Will there be complications? How will you juggle the rest of family life while trying to keep a tiny human safe and well?’”
She continued, “You know that when your baby arrives the doctors and midwives are going to be there, doing everything they can to ensure she makes it through those challenging first few days. But you have no idea how these things will play out [or] what happens next. The uncertainty leaves you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown.”
The royal family announced in an October 2024 statement that Beatrice, the eldest daughter of exes Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, was pregnant with her second baby. Daughter Athena was born earlier this year and “ a few weeks” ahead of her due date, which Beatrice noted in her Vogue UK profile. (Beatrice and Mapelli Mozzi, 41, previously welcomed daughter Sienna in 2021. The princess is also stepmother to her husband’s son, Wolfie, 8, from a past relationship.)
“I learnt so much from this pregnancy journey — the latter stages of which I spent with all of these questions [noted above] spinning through my mind,” Beatrice wrote in her essay. “Following routine scans, we became aware our precious cargo needed close monitoring and understood we needed to prepare for an early arrival.”
According to Beatrice, it’s since “been humbling” to learn and understand more about human bodies — and “more than anything, what we don’t know.”
“In many ways, for the longest time, women’s health has been left off the agenda. You can try and plan as much as possible with pregnancy, but sometimes your body — or your baby — has other ideas, which in some cases can lead to a preterm birth,” Beatrice added. “Thankfully, with ever-evolving technology in the hands of knowledgeable doctors, midwives and nurses, more progress is being made every day towards understanding the unique complications that can accompany a preterm pregnancy.”
Beatrice further stressed that she was “very fortunate” to be closely monitored by her doctors — and Athena ultimately arrived healthy at 4 pounds and 5 ounces.
“She was so tiny it took more than a few weeks for the tears of relief to dry and for life with our healthy baby to feel real,” Beatrice recalled. “Her feet were so small — almost the same size as the paws on one of my older daughter’s soft bunnies. … I’m extremely pleased to let you know Athena is now doing really well.”
Beatrice decided to open up about her maternity experience to help other new parents going through similar situations.
“It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’ve come from, so many elements of pregnancy are universal,” she stated. “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. Like countless other expectant moms, 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?’”
