In her brief tenure as a royal, Meghan Markle has solidified her reputation as a health-focused monarchy modernizer. She's instituted 4:30 A.M. royal yoga sessions, convinced Prince Harry to give up alcohol and caffeine, and instituted a mostly plant-based diet in the couple's royal household. Just call her the official royal wellness guru. So naturally, her reported plans for the birth of Baby Sussex—coming to a newsfeed near you this spring—are just as enlightened.
“Meg wants a natural birth if she can have one," a source reportedly close to the couple told Vanity Fair. "Her mother is very into anything that is holistic and natural, and having been brought up with yoga and mindfulness, it’s all very much part of Meghan’s birth plan."
The au naturel move is becoming more and more popular among pregnant women, who are opting for natural births involving midwives and doulas over drugs and doctors. Midwives are now present at over 13 percent of all births in the U.S., and the number of home births (and births in birthing centers) has jumped by 70 percent since 2004, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Harry and Meghan's birth plan is right on trend. It reportedly involves a home birth and hypnobirthing—a meditative approach to giving birth that involves breathing and visualization techniques. It sounds a little woo-woo, but medically speaking, the technique can help with pain management, says Adeeti Gupta, M.D., a board-certified ob-gyn in New York City.
According to Vanity Fair, Megs has also been having regular acupuncture sessions to help her stay zen during her third trimester. "It’s brilliant for the blood circulation and boosting blood flow to the uterus," a source close to celebrity acupuncturist Ross Barr (whom Meghan and Harry visited on the reg leading up to the royal wedding) told Vanity Fair. "She plans to use acupuncture right up to her due date."
Though it sounds all kinds of trendy, the Sussexes' plans are more traditional for the royal family than you might think. Home births are one of the oldest traditions in the monarchy—Kate Middleton and Princess Diana were the ones to break with tradition by delivering the most recent royal generation in a hospital. Those rebels! Before that, royal home births were the norm. Even mindfulness-based hypnobirthing isn't new to the monarchy. The Duchess of Cambridge reportedly used the technique during all three of her deliveries.
The major way Meghan is breaking with tradition? By having a doula, whose role is to be her right-hand woman during the birthing process, present for the birth of Baby Sussex. According to The Sun, the royal couple is working with a London-based doula, who would be the first doula in centuries to be present at a royal birth. The research that's been done on doulas is convincing—births that include doulas have been shown to decrease the length of labor and use of pain killers, according to the American Pregnancy Association—but only time will tell if the "Markle Sparkle" applies to birth trends too.
