Kate Middleton Talks About Struggle With Mom Guilt In Candid Interview

Kate Middleton opened about parenting, morning sickness and her struggle with “mom guilt” in a particularly candid interview on the “Happy Mum, Happy Baby” podcast posted Saturday.

When host Giovanna Fletcher asked the Duchess of Cambridge whether she ever feels “mom guilt” when it comes to her three children, Prince George, 6, Princess Charlotte, 4 and Prince Louis, 1, she responded: “All the time.”

“I think anyone who doesn’t … is actually lying,” Kate said with a laugh, before noting that her two oldest children had expressed disappointment that she was unable to drop them off at school that morning.

Kate added that as a mother, “you’re always sort of questioning your own decisions and your own judgments and things like that. And I think that starts from the moment you have a baby.”

The duchess was visiting the LEYF Stockwell Gardens Nursery in London at the time of the interview, as part of her new project, 5 Big Questions on the Under 5s. The initiative aims to help “build the healthiest generation in history by giving every child the best start in life,” according to its website. 

Kate told Fletcher that given all she’s learned about parenting over the years, she “definitely would have done things differently, even during my pregnancy, than I would have done now, knowing the importance of the early years.”

“The emotional well-being of the mother directly impacts the baby you’re growing,” she said, adding that emotional stress is hard for anyone to control considering “life’s challenges.”

“I was a lot more aware of it third time around than I was first time around,” Kate said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Kate opened up about suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, a condition that involves severe nausea, vomiting and weight loss, among other symptoms, for expectant mothers.

“I’m not the happiest of pregnant people,” Kate said, explaining that she had hyperemesis with each pregnancy.

“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,” she said, later adding: “[Prince William] didn’t feel like he could do much to help, and you know it’s hard for everyone to see suffering without actually being able to do anything about it.”

The duchess also opened up about what it was like to debut her newborn babies to the press outside of St. Mary’s Hospital in London after giving birth. 

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

She later added that while she and William were “hugely grateful” for the public support, it was equally “coupled with a newborn baby and sort of inexperienced parents and the uncertainty of what that held, so there was all sorts of … sort of mixed emotions.”