Happy mum Happy baby

It can't just be me that finds all the attention and publicity about the royals puzzling - and totally irrelevant.

I just switch off my attention and wait for the odd royal news items to drift by, rather like waiting for an irritating buzzing fly to go away.

Of course they live in a different world and (try but) have no idea of a 'normal' life. What I can't understand is the common fascination with what they do and say - it's most peculiar.

Well said janipat

Did Diana get condemned for not being homless when she
visited charities for the homless,.

Harry didn’t get injured when in the army , should he be condemned for The Invictus Games

You put that very well Monica and I completely agree.

I am struck by how mercenary minded some posters are. They cannot see a person, only money. If you are not starving in a gutter, every feeling every tragedy can be dismissed because you are rich.

You are fleeing Syria have been using your wealth to pay smugglers to get to the UK, the rubber dinghy overturns in the channel and all your children are drowned. That won't matter they are rich they have lots of money.

The Duchess of Cambridge has truly dreadful pregnancies, lives her whole life in the public eye, has all the problems of a working mother, like many other women she pays for cchildcare and relies on grandparents. But nothing she suffers or feels counts for anything because as far as these posters are concerned she has money, lots of lovely money .

What I find amazing is some who can't wait to twist the knife into Catherine, are the very same ones who accuse any criticisers of Meghan of being "haters" "racists" and worse. How come Meghan can empathise with life experiences of which she has no personal knowledge and Catherine can't? And do people really suppose that she never washed up, cleaned a loo etc while at university? Meghan was lauded for messages written on bananas for sex workers, do we really think Meghan has any experience of being a sex worker? For goodness sake is it so hard to believe that people can empathise with others whose life experience is very different to their own personal experience? I know I can relate to people with better and worse situations than my own. How sad if we lose the notion that you don't have to live a situation to have sympathy and empathy for that situation, it would foretell the end of charitable endeavours.

trying to
(not gobbledegook)

All of our experiences of motherhood are different too.

I don't suppose Catherine feels like going out always trupyingmto look her best, under public scrutiny and leaving the children to be looked after by someone else.

Every working mother has to have someone else, whether that be a grandmother, childminder, nursery or nanny.
Many may wish they did not and would prefer to be a SAHM.

Gillybob you and I are not ‘us’, we have lived and do live different lives . I didn’t go to university many posters here did, we are not us. There are posters who are/were professionals, I
was not. Some divorced , I did not. Some were widowed and remarried, I was widowed but didn’t remarry, where is the us ?
The ‘us’ is we love our children as Kate loves her children ,she is one of us.

Kate's mother started her business at the kitchen table.
She was enterprising and worked hard and it is a success.

Everyone's birth experiences are different but it doesn't mean that someone cannot have empathy for those whose experiences may be more difficult for whatever reason.

As I said to trisher upthread, gilly. What would you like Kate to do to show she understands how the rest of us live?

I agree that they've never had to struggle but Kate was brought up in a normal middle class family. They worked hard for their money and her mother and grandmother have passed on values that she treasures. We all hope our advice, support and hopefully wisdom is appreciated by those who follow us in life.

I think she's trying her best to get it right.

Most mothers have to juggle the running of the home and looking after a baby . Others have an outside the home job on top. Maybe my experience was slightly different to yours GrannyLaine maybe you didn’t work outside the home ? I don’t know . But I bet the first 2 applied . The royals have a team of people at their beck and call to do all the menial stuff for them . They don’t have to worry about washing, cleaning, ironing, planning meals and looking after the baby too.

I have nothing at all against Kate but I wish she would stop pretending to be “like any other mum” because she isn’t .

Yes Merlotgran thalidomide was a year or two before my first baby. How glad I was that it had been found to cause such damage and so I would never have accepted a pill for my sickness. I came from hospital in my nightie, dressing gown and slippers. I didnt have to stand before the worlds press having to look good although not feeling great. I have every admiration for Catherine and William because I think they are more aware of what the average person goes through than previous generations

But who is "the same as us" gillybob? Sweeping generalisations help no one. Is your experience of parenthood the same as mine?

When I had my first baby I was very very sick for at least 5 months but the medical advice in 1963 was drink lots of water and eat plain biscuits. Because we had a house with a bathroom and there was a shortage of maternity beds I was assigned a domicillary midwife to have my baby at home. I developed pre-eclampsia so ended up in hospital and had baby there. But because I had a midwife booked I was home in 48 hours. No paternity leave my husband had to go to work as normal so the ambulance took me home to an empty house. So I was at home in a cold house with my new baby not knowing what to do first. Knock at the door and there stood my lovely DM and she looked after us all for a week. She even had my DH sleeping in the spare room while she moved in with me because the baby would just not settle at night. We were very poor at the time and the only new thing in the house was our double bed and the spare bed was my bed from home but I think I felt richer than any princess being so well looked after so I could concentrate on my new baby. Baby number 2 was born at home and Mum took time off work again to be there.

Oh come on. When have any of the royals known what it’s like to live in the real world? I made an imagine any of them doing things for themselves. Shopping, Cooking, cleaning, looking after their own children and doing a full, time job on top.

Let’s not pretend they are “the same as us” because they’re not.

I’m really shocked and disappointed to read so many vitriolic comments.

Every aspect of the poor woman’s life is scrutinised, she is trying so hard to empathise, one does not have had to have gone through an experience to have some knowledge and understanding of the effect it can have.

She and her husband have spent time volunteering for and working with different organisations and charities to gain an understanding of the struggles ordinary people face.

Diana Princess of Wales had never been blown up by a land mine but a two minute news clip of her hugging a victim and then walking through a once mined area sure as hell guaranteed the world was aware of the damage they caused.

Stop tearing the poor girl apart, privilege, money and title are no guarantee of happiness, her late mother in law was proof of that.

I had hyperemesis gravidarum or bloody awful endless morning sickness as it was known in the sixties. I put up with it for weeks because I thought that's what you did but our neighbour and landlady let herself in one afternoon because she could hear our labrador whining to go out. DH was at work and I was too weak to get out of bed.

She called our lovely GP who gave me a stern talking to and admitted me to hospital for rehydration.

It was about six years after the horrors of thalidomide and it still makes me shudder to think that had I been offered a pill to ease the symptoms I'd have gladly taken it.

I was sick for seven months with each of my three pregnancies. Neither of my daughters suffered morning sickness at all thank goodness.

What a horrible thread this is. Every woman comes to pregnancy and birth with a unique set of life experiences and each has her own fears joys and expectations. To judge women based on our own perceptions of the burden (or otherwise) that others carry is small minded, but to imagine somehow that wealth and privilege provide immunity to the anxieties and stresses of new parenthood is deplorable. I'm truly shocked by some of the comments above.

Yes, I will go to Switzerland if it all gets too much.
But imwant to go up the Jungfraujoch first.

GagaJo that happened with a friend of mine, pregnant just after me and she was given drugs to stop the vomiting.
I used to wonder which was worse and thought I would probably have put up with the vomiting rather than than take the drugs. However, the baby was fine.

The mmain cause of population growth currently is not too many births, over two thirds of the world's countries are down to replacement level or less. The real problem is that all we oldies are living too long

If we want to reduce the population it is time the over 60s stopped bothering the NHS with all our ills and instead stayed home and died or bought a ticket to Dignitas.

And who is the first volunteer?

She has an ulcer and ongoing reflux as well as damage to her teeth from stomach bile. But to be expected when vomiting between 5 and 10 times a day, for 8 months.

Luckily the baby didn't suffer.

I felt rather sick and as if I had flu all the way through. I had to leave work early which was very annoying.

I hope your DD is coping well now.

I don't know what would have happened to her if I hadn't. She was so ill while she was pregnant. Couldn't even keep water down. It was truly horrific.

Don't report it - leave it as a keepsake.