The King’s niece, 36, and her husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, welcomed daughter Athena Elizabeth Rose on January 22. The birth was revealed in an announcement by the Palace, sharing that she had arrived safely and weighed 4lb 5oz (2kg).
Now, Princess Beatrice has revealed more details about the “months of sheer worry” she experienced after learning her daughter was likely to arrive early, in a first-person essay for British Vogue.
Beatrice was recently appointed patron of premature research charity Borne and says her own experience was “humbling.”
After routine scans during pregnancy revealed her daughter needed close monitoring, she says she spent a lot of time worrying about what might happen.
“You have no idea how these things will play out, what happens next. The uncertainty leaves you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown.”
She acknowledged the many common feelings and experiences mothers share, despite their background.
“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 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?”
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She says following Athena’s safe arrival “a few weeks before her due date,” it took a while to process the journey she and her husband had been on.
“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. Her feet were so small – almost the same size as the paws on one of my older daughter’s soft bunnies.”
The Princess acknowledged she was lucky to have an expert team to care for her and her daughter and now wants to support and help others in a similar position. She says she is “extremely pleased” to say Athena is now doing “really well,” and though she has a few more answers as to what happened, like many women, “still no precise explanation”.
“What I learnt in this process has been humbling,” wrote the princess, saying she now understands more about “our remarkable human bodies, but also, more than anything, what we don’t know.”
Beatrice said she has shared her experience as she had found comfort in being as open as possible with family, friends and “even other mums at the school gates” and wanted to shine a spotlight on women’s health issues and the need for more research.
