In his memoir,
The Substitute
, published on January 10, Prince Harry delivers explosive revelations about his youth as well as the royal family and its members.
In these pages, he also confides in his private life and recounts the difficult delivery of Meghan Markle during the birth of their eldest son, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, on May 6, 2019, one week after the expected date.
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A painful childbirth
May 6, 2019, Portland Hospital Private Maternity.
While awaiting the onset of her delivery, Meghan Markle is calm, and Harry tries to keep his by inhaling the laughing gas originally intended to relieve his wife, he writes.
“I slowly took a few puffs of it.
Meg, bouncing around on a big purple ball, a tried-and-true way to give nature a little boost, laughed as she rolled her eyes.
I took a few more puffs and now I was bouncing, too."
To provide a charming setting for his wife to give birth, Prince Harry thinks of everything.
From the small lights present in the garden the evening of his marriage proposal placed all around the delivery room... to the photo of his mother, Lady Diana, placed on a small table.
“An idea from Meg,” he says in his book.
Not to mention the background sound.
“Meg got into a bathtub while I put on soothing music.
Deva Premal – she remixes Sanskrit mantras into very expressive hymns, he says.
Something powerful."
Read alsoPrince Harry reveals the text exchanges that made Meghan Markle (or Kate Middleton) cry
Suddenly, the mood changes.
Neither the breathing exercises nor the first injected epidural relieved Meghan Markle's pain.
The labor triggered, Harry recounts the complications.
“I saw the baby's skull.
His head was stuck.
Caught in the cord, he recalls.
I said to Meg: My love, you have to push.
I didn't tell him why.
I didn't tell him about the umbilical cord, I didn't mention the possibility of an emergency caesarean section.
I just whispered: Give it all you got.
And that's what she did."
Harry then talks about the tears that run through them both, when they meet their son in good health.
Read also“I was designed in case something bad happened to William”: Prince Harry recounts a life in the role of “double”
A background of media pressure
At the same time, Prince Harry remembers the impatience of the communication services of the Palace when the delivery date was exceeded by a week.
“When is the baby due?
The press can't wait forever, you know!"
To escape journalists, the princely couple even went to the hospital in an unmarked van, before infiltrating a secret elevator and being guided to a private room.
When the start of the delivery was officially announced, Archi had already been born for a few hours and the family had already returned to their then residence, Frogmore Cottage.
“We had to give the press the dramatic and suspenseful story it demanded,” describes the prince bitterly.
Archie Mountbatten-Windsor was then presented to the general public two days after his birth, in St George's Gallery at Windsor Castle.
As a reminder, Meghan Markle had refused to comply with the tradition according to which the prince's wives must pose with their newborn on the steps of the maternity ward.
A lack of team spirit on their part, had lamented the British tabloids.
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