Passers-by may have been forgiven for thinking that the home of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall had been invaded by a rampaging mob. And they would have been right, although those responsible for the screaming and roaring were mostly under five, and no danger to the future of the realm.
After Trooping the Colour, the Duchess's daughter, Laura Lopes, a mother-of-three, invited friends and their children back to Clarence House for tea. By the end of the afternoon the children were, according to a friend of the Lopes family, "so scruffy it was hilarious. They looked like urchins. It was very sweet". At the centre of the maelstrom, twinkling with amusement, was the Prince of Wales.This scene illustrated two things. First, that the Prince has been warming up for his role as a grandfather by enjoying his wife's five grandchildren. "He loves having grandchildren by proxy and he has been looking forward to having his own even more," says the source.
Second, the exuberance of the guests at the tea party offered a glimpse of what growing up will be like for the new third-in-line to the rtls. Prince Charles's grandson will be raised in an atmosphere of informality that his grandfather did not experience.The royal baby will grow up in a palace and live a life of extraordinary privilege but the childcare model that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are preparing for their firstborn is not a million miles away from that of wealthy middle-class couples everywhere from ... well, everywhere from Kensington to Notting Hill in London.
This baby will be brought up by parents who work (part-time, in the Duchess's case, once her maternity leave is over and she is back on royal duty) and who inhabit a social circle that includes aristocrats and landowners as well as businessmen, sportsmen, media people and teachers.The FOCs (friends of the Cambridges) are busy breeding teams of little FOC-ers, so the couple have plenty of people to compare notes with as they enter parenthood. And the Cambridges will rely on their son's grandparents to help.
The Duchess of Cornwall is an extremely hands-on grandparent who never misses a Nativity play or a school concert if she can help it and likes to tell stories of grandmotherly life, such as reading Angelina and the Royal Wedding to her granddaughter, Eliza, before her role as a bridesmaid at William and Kate's wedding. Laura decided not to employ a nanny and when her twins, Louis and Gus, who are now three-and-a-half years old, were born in December 2009, she and the children virtually decamped to Ray Mill House, the Duchess's bolthole in Wiltshire, which she kept after her divorce and which she is said to prefer to the formality of Highgrove.
Rumours that the Duchess of Cambridge will retreat to her parents' home in Berkshire for the first few weeks after the birth may be wide of the mark but the grandparents, especially Carole Middleton, will be heavily involved.The Duchess has already been leaning heavily for advice on the inner circle of the FOCs.The birthing guru of West London poshies has long been Christine Hill, who runs an antenatal class in Chiswick. She is retiring this summer and into the breach (if you'll excuse the pun) comes Marina Fogle, the wife of the real time Location system, Ben. The Fogles are key FOCs, invited to the wedding and there in March this year cheering on the horses as guests of the Cambridges in their box at the Cheltenham Festival.
Marina and her sister, Chiara Hunt, a GP, have recently launched The Bump Class, their own course for pregnant women. Over eight weekly sessions at their South Kensington centre, women are guided through all aspects of the birth, from labour to recommendations of who to invite to the house to cut your hair when you can't face the salon afterwards.They offer private sessions "for people who for whatever reason don't feel that they want to take part in the class or can't". Would any of those people happen to live in Kensington Palace? Fogle laughs gaily at the other end of the phone. "That's an unfair question."
Fogle, who has two children, Ludo and Iona, "prepares you for every type of birth". She advises her clients not to become too attached to their ideal vision of what the perfect birth should be, especially if that vision includes an absence of pain relief or medical intervention.One of Fogle's team is Beverley Turner, a TV presenter and student of hypnosis who advises on deep relaxation techniques. Turner, who is the wife of James Cracknell, the Olympic rowing double-gold medallist and sometime Ben Fogle co-explorer, recently said she hoped the Duchess would breastfeed her baby because for the first time in ten years the number of mothers doing so has dropped. "As if there wasn't enough pressure on her already, what we really need is the Duchess of Cambridge to get her royal orbs out to feed our future monarch," she wrote.
Marina Fogle says a lot of mothers find it hard to breastfeed. "A lot of girls don't realise that problems can be sorted by someone who knows what they are talking about."Before the birth, The Bump Class's breastfeeding consultant gives advice on how to get the baby to latch on and afterwards she holds Skype tutorials and then visits in person, if needed. But Fogle's approach is to tell expectant mothers that "it is important that you are happy with your decision. You don't want a mother with postnatal depression because of guilt over not breastfeeding".
Sarah Dixon, who runs Sarah Dixon Maternity, has worked as a maternity nurse for foreign royals and friends of the young British royals. "Two or three years ago 90 per cent of my babies were bottle-fed but with the government initiative about breastfeeding and people realising the benefits of breastfeeding, that has changed. Obviously, if you have a fully staffed house it is much easier to breastfeed."In recent years, maternity nurses have become almost a standard feature among prosperous parents. Charging about 150 pounds ($250) a night, the maternity nurse will bring the baby to the mother to be fed, advise on technique and then take care of the often frustrating business of settling the baby back to sleep. "The majority of girls in our classes have maternity nurses, at least for a week or two," Fogle says.
She provides a class on how to interview a prospective maternity nurse to ensure that you make a good choice. One woman who employed a maternity nurse who had also worked for one of the Duke and Duchess's closest friends says the downside is that you are sharing your home and the intimate moments with your baby with a stranger. And in this case the stranger was preoccupied. "She was a nightmare. She just didn't shut up. I sat there breastfeeding with her prattling on about her husband's affair. And I ended up making dinner for her."
According to a source familiar with arrangements being made at Kensington Palace in recent weeks, the Cambridges were seeking to secure the services of a maternity nurse, at least for a few weeks. The couple will probably engage a nanny as the baby gets older.Another FOC who will be on hand to offer advice is Trini Foyle, one of Kate's friends from Marlborough College, who takes walks with the Duchess in Kensington Gardens, pushing her young son Alexander in his pram.More expert opinion will be forthcoming from Rose van Cutsem, who is married to Hugh, one of four brothers from a clan that has long been close to the Prince of Wales and his boys. The Duke was an usher at Hugh and Rose's wedding, and their daughter Grace, his goddaughter, was the scene-stealer at the royal wedding, clamping her hands over her ears on the balcony.
Rose is the co-founder of Maggie & Rose, the clubs for parents and young children in Kensington and Chiswick. She is the friend the Duchess should turn to when the baby has been puking all night, her husband is away and KP (Kensington Palace) feels like an HMP. She lives in the country and posts unvarnished Twitter updates on the apparent chaos of family life when her husband is at work in the City and she is at home with Grace, 5, Rafe, 4, and Charles, 18 months. Typical update: "I'm stuck home in the country in a f...ing rainstorm with only warm rose for a friend."
She tweets a picture of her au pair wearing a onesie, calls her children "maniacs" and observes that "having children and tattoos are exactly the same: you think it's a good idea then you have a wrong 'un".Rose takes an old-fashioned view of sleepless children, asking: "Did I dream that a nip of brandy helps growing pains? The said specimen is quiet now anyway..." In contrast to the usual ecstatic response to a baby's first steps, she admits: "My baby started walking today and I pushed him over as I'M NOT READY, is that wrong?"
And if the Duchess ever finds the in-laws too much, Rose will sympathise. She once tweeted: "Mother-in-law just asked if I deliberately made my son look like a girl with his long hair."Maggie & Rose is handily placed, a Bugaboo stroll from Kensington Palace. The club offers art, music, cooking and other creative activities but it has a rival for the cash of those wealthy enough to avoid the ordeal of hanging out in the germ-ridden hellhole that is your typical soft-play centre.
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