Meghan Markle and Prince Harry say they are expecting a second child 

5.1k

View
comments

Meghan Markle is expecting her second baby with Prince Harry, a spokesperson for the couple has confirmed.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are currently residing in California, are preparing to welcome a brother or sister for their young son Archie later this year.

A spokesperson for Meghan and Harry said: ‘We can confirm that Archie is going to be a big brother. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are overjoyed to be expecting their second child.’ 

The couple shared their announcement – aptly on Valentine’s Day – by posting a candid black and white image of Harry resting his hand on Meghan’s head as she lay in his lap underneath a tree.

‘The photograph of the Duke and Duchess was was taken by the couple’s longtime friend Misan Harriman. What wonderful news for the Sussexes!!’ their spokesperson added.

The happy news comes just months after Meghan, 39, revealed that she lost her second child to a miscarriage in an article for the New York Times.

It also comes on the 37th anniversary of when Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, announced that she was pregnant with him on Valentine’s Day in 1984. 

Harry and Meghan shocked the world last year when they stepped down as senior royals and announced they were moving to North America with baby Archie, who will turn two in May.

The couple have been hunkering down at a sprawling nine-bedroom mansion in Montecito that they purchased for $14.65million last June.  

Their baby announcement came just days after Harry’s cousin Princess Eugenie welcomed a baby boy on February 9. 

Meghan and Harry were said to have sent their congratulations to Eugenie privately, while keeping their own growing family under wraps.  

The sex of the couple’s second baby, as well as the due date, remain unclear. 

Baby Sussex will be the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s 10th or 11th great-grandchild, depending on whether he or she arrives before or after Zara Tindall’s baby, which is also due in 2021. 

A Buckingham Palace spokesman responded to the news by telling DailyMail.com: ‘Her Majesty, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales and the entire family are delighted and wish them well.’ 

Meghan recycled a Carolina Herrera dress made during her first pregnancy for the birth announcement photo.  

Harriman, the photographer, tweeted the image and wrote: ‘Meg, I was there at your wedding to witness this love story begin, and my friend, I am honoured to capture it grow. 

‘Congratulations to The Duke and Duchess of Sussex on this joyous news!’ 

The new baby, like Archie, will grow up thousands of miles away from the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as well as his or her cousins Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

He or she will still be eighth-in-line to the throne, bumping the Duke of York, Andrew, to the ninth slot and knocking his youngest daughter Eugenie out of the top 10.  

But the child will not be entitled, at this stage, to be an HRH nor a prince or a princess due to rules set out more than 100 years ago by George V – but this is the same as what would have happened pre-Megxit.

The baby is entitled to be a Lord or a Lady, but Harry and Meghan will again opt to style their second-born a plain Master, like Archie, or a Miss, with the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.

The Sussexes’ new infant will be the Prince of Wales’s fifth grandchild.

While Archie was born in Harry’s homeland, it is not yet clear where the couple plan to have their second child. 

Sixth in line Harry and ex-actress Meghan have been busy securing the funding for their new life, signing a lucrative deal with streaming giant Netflix, rumored to be worth more than £150 million, and another multi-million pound podcast deal with Spotify.

They have also been working on their Archewell charitable foundation, but caused controversy when Harry was accused of political interference after he urged people in the US to ‘reject hate speech’ and vote in the presidential elections.

Earlier this month the author of Meghan’s autobiography, Omid Scobie, claimed that the Duchess had no plans to join Harry on his first trip back to the UK this summer because she doesn’t want to be away from Archie. 

Scobie added that Meghan would likely catch up with the family virtually, explaining: ‘Archie loves being on Zoom calls with the family and the Queen has been enjoying those throughout lockdown.’ 

Harry and Meghan have sought to keep Archie out of the public eye for the most part since moving to California, only releasing a few photos of him on holidays such as his birthday.  

But the parents haven’t been shy about the joy that he’s brought them – and it’s likely the new addition will only make things even better.   

‘It’s magic. It’s pretty amazing. I have the best two guys in the world, so I’m really happy,’ Meghan gushed shortly after Archie’s birth.  

Harry added: ‘It’s been the most amazing experience I could ever possibly imagine. [We look forward to spending] precious times with him as he slowly, slowly starts to grow up.’

Meghan opened up about her dedication to her family in an interview for Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit last fall. 

‘Everything I’m doing is for Archie, our son. Perhaps from the outside it could look risky,’ she said. 

‘But … if you’re living an authentic life, I don’t even know if you would define it as risk anymore. You just do what’s right.’

She made the comments in apparent reference to her bombshell decision to step down from royal duties – a move that stunned Harry’s family.  

A few weeks after the Fortune interview, Meghan shared the devastating news that she had suffered a miscarriage over the summer.  

‘I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second,’ she wrote in a November op-ed for the New York Times entitled ‘The Losses We Share’. 

‘Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand. I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears. Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we’d heal. 

‘Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few.’ 

Justifying the timing of her article, she wrote: ‘This year has brought so many of us to our breaking points. So, this Thanksgiving, let us commit to asking others: “Are you OK?”‘ 

She added: ‘In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage. Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.’ 

The article concluded: ‘Are we OK? We will be.’ 

Meghan is expected to keep the details of her current pregnancy under wraps, after she and Harry stepped back from social media last year following an ‘almost unsurvivable’ amount of abuse, a source told the Sunday Times last month. 

The couple stopped posting to their Sussex Royal Instagram and Twitter accounts last year, while hinting that they could quit the sites.

The Sunday Times source said they will not use social networks to promote their new Archewell Foundation, and have no plans to return in a personal capacity.

The couple have frequently spoken out about the abuse they receive online, despite continuing to use online media to promote their ‘progressive’ new roles in the US – including most-recently via a podcast on Spotify.

Archie joined his parents on the podcast on December 29 and uttered his first four words in public – wishing people a ‘Happy New Year’ in his American accent and saying it was ‘fun’ to speak into a microphone.