Meghan 'clung' to Harry while pregnant so she wouldn't fall over at royal events
In the final episode of her podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, Meghan candidly opened up about why, during her pregnancies, she would 'cling' to Prince Harry to make sure she didn't fall over
The first series of Meghan's podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, has come to a close, with the final episode seeing Meghan sit down with the founder of SPANX, Sara Blakely.
Towards the end of the wide-ranging discussion, which saw the women discuss everything from manifestation to family, Blakely discussed her new venture with the Duchess: a company called Sneex, which makes a brand new kind of hybrid shoe that combines heels with trainers.
During their chat, the Duchess discussed her own experiences wearing uncomfortable high-heeled shoes at royal events during her first pregnancy with Prince Archie, a period of time which also saw her seriously struggle with her mental health. Meghan also admitted that in both her pregnancies, she gained quite a lot of weight - 4.6 stone or 29 kilos - which made wearing stilettos even harder.
"A friend just said to me the other day, 'I just saw this picture I had forgotten about when you were so pregnant with Archie'" Meghan explained in the candid discussion, "I mean I gained 65 pounds with both pregnancies, 'and you're in these five-inch' - I always wear my five-inch pointy-toed stilettos - they're like 'You have the most enormous bump, and your tiny little ankles are bracing themselves in these high heels'.
"But all of my weight was in the front, so you're just going 'How on earth am I not just tipping, you know, face-planting, I'm always clinging very closely to my husband like 'Please don't let me fall!'
"Well, you created the antidote," Meghan said.
During her pregnancy with Archie, Meghan was still a working royal and had to attend a myriad of high-profile events. A royal tour in Australia meant she and Harry "had to" announce her pregnancy in October 2018, they revealed in their self-titled Netflix documentary.
From the Fashion Awards to the Commonwealth Day service, there were many formal events where Meghan donned her trademark stilettos, but one in particular at the Royal Albert Hall, she revealed in 2021, was also the night that she shared with Harry that she was suffering from suicidal thoughts.
Meghan admitted to Oprah that she was "haunted" by photographs of the pair at the Sentebale event, which took place at one of her lowest points, particularly when seeing "how tightly his knuckles are gripped around mine".
For his part, Harry has expressed regret over how he handled Meghan's admission, "What took over my feelings was my royal role. I had been trained to worry more about 'What are people gonna think if we don't go to this event? We're going to be late.' Looking back at it now, I hate myself for it.' He said in the couple's documentary series, 'What she needed from me was so much more than I was able to give."
During the episode, Sara dived into why she wanted to "invent a comfortable high heel" because she never bought into the common idea that "beauty is pain" and explained that after four years of trying to make a "traditional stiletto" that was ten times more comfortable than what we're all used to, she called it quits, and made a major pivot toward a totally new kind of shoe altogether.
"It was more comfortable, Meghan," Blakely explained, "but it wasn't exponentially more comfortable, so I looked at my team, of just two girls that I absolutely adore, and I, through tears, said, we're going to pull like the plug. We tried, and it's not there.
"Because as someone who invents and creates products, especially if I'm going to launch a new company or brand around it, I always say I have a mental check that it needs to be 10x better than anything else out there, and it was maybe 4x better, but to me, that wasn't a big enough...reason to spend my time and energy".
Sara then decided to see if it were possible to "merge a sneaker with a stiletto".
Meghan then shared that when launching her recent lifestyle brand - As Ever - she herself had to "pivot" away from ideas to which she had been pretty wedded about how her jams would look, realising that as she wanted to scale the size of her company, her original "charming and darling" designs of "jam hats" wouldn't be possible to implement.
Over the course of her podcast series, Meghan has made a series of candid admissions during her chats with impressive female businesswomen, including the revelation that she suffered from postpartum preeclampsia, a "rare and scary" condition, which is caused by high blood pressure after birth and can potentially result in serious health issues such as organ failure or strokes.
"The world doesn't know what's happening quietly,' Meghan said. 'And in the quiet, you're still trying to show up for people, mostly for your children, but those things are huge medical scares." Her guest Whitney responded: 'I mean, life or death, truly.'
Meghan also opened up about suffering from a miscarriage in 2020, saying to one of her guests, "I'll bring this up if you are comfortable talking about it... I have spoken about the miscarriage we experienced. And I think in some parallel way, when you have to learn to detach from the thing that you have so much promise and hope for and to be able to be OK at a certain point to let something go, something go that you plan to love for a long time."
Confessions of a Female Founder is Meghan's second foray into the podcasting world. It follows her first show, Archetypes, which was produced by Spotify and cancelled after one series.
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The new podcast, produced by Lemonada Media, has received a pretty mixed response from critics. One called the series "sycophantic" and another said it was "45 minutes of platitudes."
However, the first episode did make the Top 10 overall podcast charts and took the number one spot amongst business podcasts, though it has since dropped off.
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