Kate isn’t the first royal to suffer from morning sickness – Sarah Ferguson The Duchess of York dined on mayonnaise mackerel sandwiches and cheeseburgers while pregnant with her eldest daughter Beatrice in 1988.
While Kate was hospitalised for hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of morning sickness, Sarah’s pregnancy woes were not so serious. She couldn’t face the idea of giving up Champagne, but doctors advised her that it was okay to drink bubbles if she limited it to three or four glasses each week.
Her diet may have relieved her morning sickness, but Sarah gained 13kg while pregnant. “I looked like an elephant and felt fat and ugly,” she later declared. Princess Diana famously wrote a note to her chef Mervyn Wycherley while pregnant with Prince William that read, “To Mervie, please could I have a bacon sandwich for breakfast and a much needed rest from our friend the tomato! D.”
Meanwhile Queen Victoria, who bore nine children, was not a fan of pregnancy. She once complained she had “aches, sufferings, miseries and plagues” during pregnancy. “I think much more of being like a cow or a dog at such moments… I positively think those ladies who are always “enceinte” [pregnant] quite disgusting: it is more like a rabbit or a guinea pig than anything else and really is not nice.”
