Earlier today, Zara and Mike Tindall announced that they are expecting another baby. This will be a second child for the couple, who are already parents to Mia, who is three-years-old.
It is thought this baby will be due in the summer, approximately six months after The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s third child.
A spokesman for the couple said: “I can confirm Zara is pregnant with her second child.”
The Queen was ‘very pleased’ to hear the news, a spokesperson said; this will be her seventh great-grandchild, the youngest after Princess Charlotte.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “The Queen and members of the royal family were very pleased to hear this news.”
The Tindall family spent this Christmas in Australia – thought to be with Zara’s father, Captain Mark Phillips and his family – rather than at Sandringham with The Queen, who was joined by Meghan Markle. Reports also suggest the couple were on a working holiday.
In December 2016, Zara and Mike sadly suffered a miscarriage, just a short time after announcing their happy news. Former rugby-player Mike told how he and his wife had attended a scan to find out the gender of their unborn child before ‘the whole world [was] turned upside down’ by their loss.
“Obviously you’re gutted, you never want to go through it, you never want your wife to go through it,” he said. “I think, if I was honest, we were very lucky that we already had Mia, so you immediately go home from the hospital and there’s a three-year-old causing carnage and it immediately takes your mind off it.
“But it was an eye-opener for how many people go through it.”
Zara, 36, met husband Mike, 39, during the rugby world cup of 2003 in Australia, and married in 2011 at Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh.
Princess Anne’s daughter will be taking a step back from her equestrian career, until the baby arrives later this year; the child will be 19th-in-line to the British throne, but will not be a Prince of Princess, nor an HRH.
We can expect this baby to also be born in Gloucester, near to where the couple live. Mia was born in an NHS ward, and this seems a likely route for the couple’s second child.