Kate in Feb 2020

Last week, Duchess of Cambridge shared some really intimate family and personal secrets at her first-ever Podcast. Catherine joined Giovanna Fletcher at Giovanna’s popular podcast ‘Happy Mum Happy Baby’. The Duchess candidly talked about motherhood, childhood memories and her passion for early years work. You can hear the podcast here.

I simply loved the episode and the fact that we usually never hear Catherine speaking this much. In the podcast, Duchess was warm, passionate while she very intelligently touched all the aspects of her personal, public and royal life – Childhood, Motherhood, Working Mother’s guilt, Mental Health, Public Expectations, fears and moments of family life.

Catherine met Giovanna, who is Sunday Times No.1 bestselling author, in Birmingham at the launch of landmark Survey ‘5 Big Questions on the Under Fives’. After the engagement. I believe the idea of having Duchess at the podcast was born that day. Then Duchess of Cambridge and Giovanna sat down together to record the podcast after their another joint engagement at LEYF Stockwell Gardens Nursery in London. You can take part in the survey by clicking here.

Both ladies, who are the mother of three young children, discussed Catherine’s work in the area of Early Years that has built up to the landmark survey, the importance of the early years. They also shared experiences as mothers to three children. The ‘Happy Mum Happy Baby’ podcast focuses on the challenges of the Parenthood in a series of frank and warm conversations with mums and dads covering all aspects of parenthood, from tackling loneliness to being a single parent.

About hosting the podcast with the Duchess of Cambridge, Giovanna said, “It doesn’t matter who you are, what you have, or where you come from – we’re all trying to do our best with our children while continuously doubting our decisions and wondering if we’re getting it completely wrong. Talking helps unite us all. Having been with the Duchess of Cambridge on a couple of engagements to celebrate the launch of the 5 Big Questions survey, it was clear how passionate she is about the Early Years. It was then beyond wonderful to sit and talk further about the survey, her work – for which she has so much knowledge, and her own experiences of being a mother. This is a very special episode of the podcast and I’m very excited for people to hear it”.

During the podcast, Catherine shared some really intimate details of her childhood, her pregnancy and life as a mother. She talked about her work in Early Years and the survey. You can read the full transcript of the survey here.  Some snippets from what Catherine told us during the podcast. About her work in Early Years:

since I got married, I’ve been looking into this as a huge passion, and going out and listening to what makes people tick and the things that unify people, but also the struggles that people are facing right in the early days, meeting lots of people who are struggling with addiction, homelessness, abuse and things like that, you really get moved by some of the challenges that people are facing and it’s really heartbreaking to hear.  And the more you look into everybody’s experiences, so many of those hardest social challenges really get traced right back to the earliest years of somebody’s life.

And you hear that time and time again across the nation, across the world, you hear the really sad reality that what we experience in our childhood really has a lifelong impact on our future health and happiness.

So I suppose that has really driven my interest in digging deep into the early years landscape, speaking to academics, speaking to doctors, practitioners, charities, and all those within the sector to try and work out some of what could be done to help prevent some of these really sad social challenges that I think all of us witness across the country.

Catherine shared some sweet snippets from her childhood:

I had a very happy childhood. It was great fun – I’m very lucky, I’ve come from a very strong family – my parents were hugely dedicated to us – my siblings. I really appreciate now as a parent how much they sacrificed for us.

But it is really true – you know, they would come to every sports match – I was very keen on sport – they came to every sports match, they’d be the ones on the side-line shouting, and we’d always have our family holidays together.

But I think the things that really resonate with me most are the simple things and actually I see that now with my own children, life now is so busy, so distracting and actually sometimes the simple things like watching a fire on a really rainy day provide such enjoyment.

I remember that from my childhood – doing the simple things, going for a walk together, and that’s really what I try and do with my children as well because it totally strips away all the complications, all the pressures…

I think, if I take the experience from my own childhood, coupled with what I know now and what I’ve learnt from the experts in the Early Years sector, I think there’s a few things that really stand out for me.

One is quality of relationships. So, those moments that you spend with people that are around you. I remember that from my own childhood. I had an amazing Granny who devoted a lot of time to us, playing with us, doing arts and crafts and going to the greenhouse to do gardening, and cooking with us, and I try and incorporate a lot of the experiences that she gave us at the time into the experiences that I give my children now.

There are also the environments that you spend time in as well: a happy home, a safe environment. As children, we spent a lot of time outside and it’s something I’m really passionate about. I think it’s so great for physical and mental wellbeing and laying those foundations. It’s such a great environment to actually spend time in, building those quality relationships without the distractions of ‘I’ve got to cook’ and ‘I’ve got to do this’. And actually, it’s so simple.

We have always known that William and Catherine are very hands-on parents. Last year, Catherine cancelled her appearance at the Tusk awards as there was nobody to babysit little Cambridge kids. When Giovanna asked, Do you struggle with mum guilt? For having the juggle…” Catherine said,

Yes absolutely – and anyone who doesn’t as a mother is actually lying! Yep – all the time, yep – and you know even this morning, coming to the nursery visit here – George and Charlotte were like ‘Mummy how could you possibly not be dropping us off at school this morning?’

About her first pregnancy with Prince George, Duchess said,

It was fine. I got very bad morning sickness, so I’m not the happiest of pregnant people. unfortunately. Lots of people have it far, far worse, but it was definitely a challenge. Not just for me but also for your loved ones around you – and I think that’s the thing – being pregnant and having a new-born baby and things like that, impacts everybody in the family.

You know, William didn’t feel he could do much to help and it’s hard for everyone to see you suffering without actually being able to do anything about it.

I was really sick – I wasn’t eating the things I should be eating – but yet, the body was still able to take all the goodness from my body and to grow new life, which I think is fascinating.

We all remember the moments of ‘Great Kate Wait’ in 2013 when William and Catherine introduced their first child Prince George to the World in front of International Media.  Duchess talked about that exact moment in the podcast and gave what was actually happening,

Yeah, slightly terrifying, slightly terrifying, I’m not going to lie. No, it’s hard, I like to decompartmentalise – what’s the word – compartmentalise, yes, the whole thing. Everyone had been so supportive and both William and I were really conscious that this was something that everyone was excited about and you know we’re hugely grateful for the support that the public had shown us, and actually for us to be able to share that joy and appreciation with the public, I felt was really important. But equally, it was coupled with a new-born baby, and inexperienced parents, and the uncertainty of what that held, so there were all sorts of mixed emotions.

Everything goes in a bit of a blur. I think, yeah I did stay in hospital overnight, I remember it was one of the hottest days and night with huge thunderstorms so I didn’t get a huge amount of sleep, but George did which was really great. I was keen to get home because, for me, being in the hospital, I had all the memories of being in the hospital because of being sick so it wasn’t a place I wanted to hang around in. So, I was really desperate to get home and get back to normality.

And the moment when Prince William carried his sone Prince George to the car before driving his family away from the hospital to their home. Giovanna thought ‘The Duke when he put Prince George in the car, that was seamless” – we all thought but Catherine shared some really interesting tidbits,

But he probably didn’t think so at the time! We were like ‘What do we do?… in a swaddle?’. ‘How’s this supposed to work?!’. We’d even tried to practice with a little baby, like a little doll, at home but you know it just never works out the way you planned it so it was quite hard to do that on the world’s stage, but no, he did a very good job.

Duchess topped the whole podcast with an extremely sweet moment,

I’ve got this one photo of Charlotte smelling a bluebell, and really for me, it’s moments like that mean so much to me as a parent, and I try every day to put moments like that in even if they’re small or even if I don’t have time… but that in an ideal world is what I would like to do.

Someone did ask me the other day, what would you want your children to remember about their childhood?

And I thought that was a really good question because actually if you really think about that, is it that I’m sitting down trying to do their maths and spelling homework over the weekend?

Or is it the fact that we’ve gone out and lit a bonfire and sat around trying to cook sausages that hasn’t worked because it’s too wet? That’s what I would want them to remember, those moments with me as a mother, but also the family going to the beach, getting soaking wet, filling our boots full of water, those are what I would want them to remember.

Not a stressful household where you’re trying to do everything and not really succeeding at one thing.

A refresher of what Duchess of Cambridge wore that day. She was wearing a new blue long coat that is still unidentified with Sezane Tulio Jumper and black skinny jeans. Her Russell & Bromley Fab Dry Ankle Boots and UFO Gold Fringe Earrings.

Next, the Duchess of Cambridge,  the Patron of Sports Aid, will visit the London Stadium at the Olympic Park in Stratford on February 26.

Today, the Duchess of Cambridge had a very whirlwind and busy day. She was visiting the Ark Open Farm near Belfast, as part of her tour of the UK to promote her landmark survey on the early years, ‘5 Big Questions on the Under-Fives’ before heading to Aberdeen in Scotland to visit the Social Bite café. Both the engagements were embargoed due to security reasons.

The visit came after the launch of her landmark survey that is part of her life long project ‘Early Years Intervention’. She launched the survey last month in Birmingham. Then Catherine visited Cardiff and Woking to promote the survey and undertook an engagement in London too and heard from people across communities about their thoughts on how experiences in the early years can impact upon later life.

Conducted by Ipsos MORI on behalf of The Royal Foundation, the survey contains five short questions and aims to spark a national conversation on the early years that will ultimately help bring about positive, lasting change for generations to come. So far, 2,00,000 people have taken part in the survey.

Duchess of Cambridge, who is styled as Baroness Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland, was welcomed in the Irish city Belfast by the Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster who shared her excite via Twitter, “Delighted to welcome the Duchess of Cambridge to Belfast earlier.….lots of excited children….and adults”.

About the survey Palace said,

“It follows eight years of work by the Duchess of Cambridge, during which she has explored how experiences in early childhood often lie at the root of the hardest social challenges the country faces today. Catherine has spent time meeting with families across the country and hearing about the issues they deal with day-to-day, as well as speaking to academics, experts, organisations and practitioners. In May 2018, the Duchess convened a steering group of experts to focus on how to bring about positive, lasting change in this area.

The survey is designed to bring together the thoughts of as many people as possible – recognising that everyone has a role in ensuring strong, healthy foundations for the youngest in our society that will positively affect their lifelong outcomes. The findings should provide a vital source of information for the early years sector, helping it to better understand public perceptions of the importance of the early years, and the first-hand experiences of parents, families and carers. This public feedback will also help to focus Her Royal Highness’ work through The Royal Foundation as she endeavours to provide children across the UK with the best foundations to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.”

During her visit to the Ark Open farm, the Duchess of Cambridge spoke to local parents and grandparents about the themes covered in her survey, which closes on 21st February.

The Duchess heard their thoughts on the most important factors that ensure children become happy adults and the role of parents and society in ensuring children have the best possible start in life.

As expected, the Mother of three adorable kids, Catherine was more than happy to spend the time with kids. Talking to kids she said, “Charlotte and George will be very sad not to have met you and see this really cool farm”.

The Ark Open Farm opened in 1990 as one of the first open farms in Northern Ireland. Having initially specialised in rare breeds of farm animals, the farm has now developed a number of play areas and activities for children. At present, the farm is set on 40 acres of countryside and is home to a variety of animals, including alpacas and lambs.

Getting kids outside to play and spend time had been the centre point of Catherine’s ‘Back to Nature’ Garden in 2019.

Open farms such as this are important in providing places in the community for family members of all generations to spend quality time together while allowing children to benefit from spending time outdoors. Talking to The Belfast Telegraph the Owner Stewart Donaldson said,

He was delighted to welcome the Duchess of Cambridge to Ark Open Farm in what is a very special year for the family-run farm.

“It’s our 30th anniversary. We’re all very excited. It was quite a job keeping her visit secret. We had only 10 days notice,” he explained. “We have a plaque which Kate will unveil to mark our 30th anniversary”.

At the farm, Duchess met a very special member of the farm – Sophie the corn snake. Laughing with the children Catherine said, “This is the first time I ever held a snake-like this, how cool is that?”

A lovely video of the moment.

Before leaving, Catherine thanked the local families for participating in the survey and said, “It’s really interesting to get everyone’s perspectives”.

A video of the visit.

The second stop of the day was Social Bite Café in Aberdeen, Scotland. Catherine is styled as Countess of Strathearn in Scotland. Social Bite runs social enterprise cafés throughout Scotland and uses their platform to distribute 100,000 items of food and hot drinks to homeless people each year, as well as employing staff who have experienced homelessness themselves.

At the Café, Duchess met employees, supported volunteers and customers who have experienced homelessness. She heard how experiences in the early years of life can have a significant effect on lifelong outcomes. Duchess sat down with a group of people involved with and supported by Social Bite and discussed many issues caused by family breakdowns that can impact someone from childhood through their adult life. She talked about the benefits and hard work of the organization.

As known for her culinary habit and skills, Duchess tried her hand at the Café’s kitchen making a chicken wrap. From Telegraph’s reports,

Talking to the Social Bite co-founder Alice Thompson, Catherine asked,  “Have you found examples of how an individual’s childhood has affected them, leading them to where they are now? You obviously see a lot of issues close up, people who come into the cafe to perhaps reach out and you help them. It’s a really big thing to be able to do that and understand everyone’s story and the journey they are on.”

Ms Thompson said, “Oh absolutely, it’s such a massive factor in what we see in our work and we see so many of the same patterns emerging all the time.”

Before leaving, Catherine stood for a group photograph.

This video sums up the visit.

Thanking everyone who has participated in the survey, Duchess of Cambridge shared a message today,

What has struck me most is that so often the challenges people face in later life, whether mental health, homelessness or family breakdown – can so often be traced back to experiences in their earliest years. It prompted me to delve deeper into the early year’s landscape and learn more from the experts, the scientists and the amazing people providing services on the ground. But now is the time to get the views from everyone in society. I wanted to hear directly from people across the UK and it’s great to have been able to talk to people in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and across England about their experiences. I want to thank the 200,000 people who have filled it out because each and every response will help show us what society really thinks about raising the next generation. I am excited to hear from even more people before it closes on 21st February.

Now to What Duchess wore – Catherine supported two casual looks today.

For the visit to the farm, Duchess was wearing her Barbour Ladies Waxed ‘Defence’ Jacket.

For the visit to Scotland, Catherine changed into her Reiss Delaney coat.

Underneath the outerwears, Catherine wore a new Pure Collection Cashmere Roll Neck Sweater in Heather Cornflower. Thanks to Kate’s Royal Closet for the id. $175 sweater is described as, “Sumptuously soft, refined and understated. With its elegant polo neckline, this stunning cashmere sweater adds grown-up glamour to any outfit. In a choice of gorgeous shades, you’ll be needing more than one.” It is currently available in various shades on Pure Collection store.

Duchess brought back her two-decades-old Penelope Chilvers Long Tassel Boots.

Another new element in her look was Catherine Zoraida Gold Fern Hoop Earrings. Another fab id by Kate’s Royal Closet. Fern Drop Earrings. Made in 18ct gold plated silver earrings are available for £ 165.

We might hear something more about the Duke and Duchess’ reported Australia-visit this week.