Princess Beatrice is opening up concerning the “uncertainty” she and her husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, confronted when their daughter Athena was born prematurely in January.
“Nothing fairly prepares you for the second once you notice your child goes to reach early. There’s so little management,” Beatrice, 36, wrote in a Vogue UK essay printed on Sunday, March 23. “‘Will she arrive wholesome? Will there be issues? How will you juggle the remainder of household life whereas making an attempt to maintain a tiny human protected and nicely?’”
She continued, “ that when your child arrives the docs and midwives are going to be there, doing all the things they’ll to make sure she makes it by these difficult first few days. However you haven’t any concept how this stuff will play out [or] what occurs subsequent. The uncertainty leaves you with an amazing concern of the unknown.”
The royal household introduced in an October 2024 assertion that Beatrice, the eldest daughter of exes Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, was pregnant together with her second child. Daughter Athena was born earlier this yr and “ just a few weeks” forward of her due date, which Beatrice famous in her Vogue UK profile. (Beatrice and Mapelli Mozzi, 41, beforehand welcomed daughter Sienna in 2021. The princess can also be stepmother to her husband’s son, Wolfie, 8, from a previous relationship.)
“I learnt a lot from this being pregnant journey — the latter phases of which I spent with all of those questions [noted above] spinning by my thoughts,” Beatrice wrote in her essay. “Following routine scans, we grew to become conscious our treasured cargo wanted shut monitoring and understood we wanted to organize for an early arrival.”
In accordance with Beatrice, it’s since “been humbling” to be taught and perceive extra about human our bodies — and “greater than something, what we don’t know.”
“In some ways, for the longest time, ladies’s well being has been left off the agenda. You possibly can try to plan as a lot as attainable with being pregnant, however typically your physique — or your child — has different concepts, which in some circumstances can result in a preterm start,” Beatrice added. “Fortunately, with ever-evolving know-how within the palms of educated docs, midwives and nurses, extra progress is being made daily in the direction of understanding the distinctive issues that may accompany a preterm being pregnant.”

Beatrice additional pressured that she was “very lucky” to be carefully monitored by her docs — and Athena finally arrived wholesome at 4 kilos and 5 ounces.
“She was so tiny it took various weeks for the tears of aid to dry and for all times with our wholesome child to really feel actual,” Beatrice recalled. “Her toes have been so small — virtually the identical measurement because the paws on certainly one of my older daughter’s gentle bunnies. … I’m extraordinarily happy to let you already know Athena is now doing rather well.”
Beatrice determined to open up about her maternity expertise to assist different new dad and mom going by related conditions.
“It doesn’t matter who you’re or the place you’ve come from, so many components of being pregnant are common,” she acknowledged. “I’ve had a life that’s out of the peculiar, however my joys and fears in being pregnant and motherhood are the identical as these skilled by tens of millions of different ladies all over the world. Like numerous different expectant mothers, I lay awake within the weeks main as much as start, making an attempt to watch every motion of the infant in my tummy and asking myself a thousand instances, ‘What if this occurs, or what if that occurs?’”