Kate Middleton says posing for postpartum photos was ‘slightly terrifying’

“Yeah, slightly terrifying, slightly terrifying, I’m not going to lie,” Kate said.

During the podcast the Duchess opened up about her pregnancy and birth experiences, explaining how much hypnobirthing helped her and that she didn’t know whether she was delivering a prince or princess until Prince George was born as she’d opted to be surprised.

She was surprised and thrilled when she met her son, and looked forward to post-pregnancy life after spending her pregnancy quite ill with hyperemesis gravidarum (a seriously debilitating form of extreme morning sickness). She was happy, but was also (very understandably) overwhelmed. In addition to all the pressure new moms feel, Kate had an army of photographers waiting outside the hospital for her.

“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,” she explained. “I was keen to get home because, for me, being in hospital, I had all the memories of being in hospital because of being sick [with acute morning sickness] 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.”

Kate wanted to get home, but she also did want to share her baby boy with the public who had been so supportive of her young family, she explains.

“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,” she shared, adding that “Equally it was coupled with a newborn baby, and inexperienced parents, and the uncertainty of what that held, so there were all sorts of mixed emotions.”

“All sorts of mixed emotions.”

The now-iconic images of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge exiting the hospital with their firstborn have gone down in history, but so has Kate’s bravery that day.

There’s been a lot written about whether those pictures put pressure on other moms who might not feel ready for heels and blowouts right after giving birth, but one thing critics of the photos often miss is the positive impact it had on other young women.

Yes, Kate looked beautiful, but she also looked like a woman whose body had just given birth—and the iconic images of her in that polka-dot dress taught a generation of women that the female body isn’t an elastic band and that recovering from birth takes time.

“I, myself remember being really surprised when Kate Middleton came out of the hospital holding Prince George,” Tina, now a mom herself and a model of postpartum realness in Mothercare’s “Body Proud Mums campaign” explained last year.

Tina recalls how Kate’s postpartum appearance showed her a reality society hadn’t: “She had the baby bump, and I remember being surprised that your belly doesn’t just go down after giving birth. I also thought how stupid I was to have ever thought it would. I guess pre-children you just have unrealistic expectations.”

Tina wasn’t stupid, she just hadn’t been shown the truth.

So thank you, Kate, for stepping out of that hospital in 2013, despite being terrified, and showing the world your beautiful baby and your bump.