MIDDLETON TRADITION
Why Kate pushed for this baby
ROYAL INSIDERS SAY IT WAS THE DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE WHO LONGED FOR ANOTHER BABY
As far as childhoods go, it would be hard to have a better one than the Middleton children.
Growing up in a Berkshire farmhouse, surrounded by love, opportunity and normality, Kate, Pippa and James enjoyed an idyllic start to life with their parents Michael and Carole Middleton.
“I know that I was lucky,”
Kate has said of her childhood, adding that it was “wonderful and secure”.
With only two years between each of them, the siblings, dubbed “The Middleton Musketeers”, were close from the word go, and it’s these memories that the now Duchess of Cambridge has sought to recreate with her own family – royal or not.
With the addition of their third child, Kate (36) and Prince William (35) will recreate the same dynamic – age gaps and all – that the Middletons enjoyed. Royal insiders say their new baby was very much at Kate’s insistence, at least at first, despite her difficulties with hyperemesis gravidarum, which she has suffered from during every pregnancy.
“Kate always wanted more
than two children, it was William that needed to be persuaded,” tells a royal source.
“As one of three, Kate wanted at least three. William was more reluctant, not just because he was one of two, but because George was quite a difficult baby. Then they had Charlotte and she was a lot easier. Now the idea of a newborn doesn’t seem half as challenging – they’ve done it twice before.”
Having fulfilled her duty to bear a “heir and a spare”, Kate’s longing for another baby is purely down to maternal desire, with friends of the duchess saying she often thinks fondly of her life before she became a royal.
With a ready-made best friend in sister Pippa (34), the Middleton girls were as thick as thieves growing up and boarded at the same college together.
It was Pippa that her elder sister leaned on the most during her relationship with William – especially during 2007, when they separated briefly – and they continue to be each other’s closest confidantes.
And the sisters always completely doted on James
(30), the baby of the family – and likewise, he was in a protective awe of his older sisters, especially Kate.
“I used to be first up in the morning to make sure I could get the papers and rip out any stories about my sister, so nobody would see them and there would be no conversations about them,” he says of trying to shield his eldest sister from the intense public interest when she first started dating William.
“We can be normal with each other and that’s kept us all affixed to the ground,” Pippa adds.
It’s this support network that convinced William to have Kate’s much longed-for baby, royal sources tell.
With Prince George destined to be king, those close to William say he’s determined that his heir, as well as his other children, will grow up with as much support and care as possible – and who better to provide that than another brother or sister.
Of course, William is familiar with the need to have emotional support from those closest, with Princess Diana’s death drawing him and Prince Harry incredibly close when they were so young.
“We are uniquely bonded because of what we’ve been through,” he stated last year in a Heads Together video.
Seeing how Kate still leans on her siblings for help, guidance and advice has made William realise he wants that for his own family, especially with the added pressures of royal life and, eventually, with becoming king.
A little more normality for a life that is destined to be anything but for the little family.