{"id":160308,"date":"2025-06-05T13:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T13:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/160308\/"},"modified":"2025-06-05T13:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T13:26:09","slug":"the-meghan-markle-pregnancy-dancing-video-has-a-joyful-universality-we-need-more-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/160308\/","title":{"rendered":"The Meghan Markle Pregnancy Dancing Video Has A Joyful Universality We Need More Of"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Meghan Markle\u2019s<\/a> recent Instagram post celebrating her daughter Lilibet\u2019s 4th birthday, she and Harry are in a delivery suite at the hospital where – presumably – Lilibet was later born, dancing to Starrkeisha’s \u2018The Baby Momma Dance\u2019 song. In the caption Markle explains that, a week over her due date and having exhausted all the other options to induce labour, she and her husband decided it was time to dance.
<\/p>\n

FIND OUT MORE ON ELLE COLLECTIVE<\/a><\/p>\n

The video has prompted the usual frothing-at-the-mouth from the right-wing press, who\u2019ve accused Meghan of \u2018twerking\u2019 (weird – she wasn\u2019t) and Harry of, well, dancing robotically – and who\u2019ve chastised the couple for allowing the world into this private moment. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s such a dour, joyless response to what is, at heart, a sweet home video. And it seems to fundamentally miss the point. A child\u2019s birthday is never just their day (though of course that\u2019s not something I ever thought about before having my own) it\u2019s also the anniversary of the day you gave birth – an experience that is ecstatic, terrifying, and profoundly physical. Of course, you might look back at those final moments before it all began and reflect on the person you were, and the threshold you were about to cross.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m broadly ambivalent towards the Royals, and I\u2019ve always found the reaction to Meghan and Harry from certain corners of the British media establishment strange. What, exactly, is the issue? Royalty is the ultimate gilded cage – yes, they\u2019re born into immense wealth and privilege, but they\u2019re also hounded wherever they go, expected to suppress all traces of individuality, and toe a line that was drawn centuries ago. In that context, it makes perfect sense to me that someone might want to break free, to reclaim a sense of personal agency, to live a life shaped by choice rather than obligation.<\/p>\n

\n

“It\u2019s intimate, silly and deeply human.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s not to say that I\u2019m a Sussex stan and I haven\u2019t always been a fan of their ‘post-Megxit’ output – I found them a little remote and unrelatable in their Netflix documentary, for instance. But then, why wouldn\u2019t I? Their reality is unique, their problems impossibly rarefied so of course they\u2019re remote and unrelatable. <\/p>\n

This video, though, has a kind of joyful universality. A heavily pregnant woman dancing in a hospital room, trying to coax her baby into the world – it\u2019s intimate, silly and deeply human. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth considering too that we live in a society that often seeks to downplay the dangers of giving birth, portraying it as a \u2018natural\u2019 and \u2018everyday\u2019 experience – a role mothers are \u2018meant\u2019 to fulfil, and therefore not deemed worthy of fanfare. This narrative glosses over the brutal truth that childbirth can be traumatic, even life-threatening, and its aftermath can stay with you long after the balloons have deflated and well wishers have gone home.<\/p>\n

Torn muscles, nerve damage, fractured tailbones, pelvic floor injuries – these are not outliers, they are part of the spectrum of \u2018normal\u2019 birth. I don\u2019t say this to scare anyone, but as a reminder that childbirth isn\u2019t just the act of bringing life into the world, it\u2019s about being pushed to the very edge of human endurance.<\/p>\n

Motherhood is so often obscured by pastel cliches and Instagram-filtered sentimentality but behind the babygrows and milestone cards is something far more radical. It\u2019s surviving the kind of physical trauma you might expect from a high-speed collision and then walking out of the hospital 12 hours later, with a baby. It\u2019s wild and brutal and completely magnificent. <\/p>\n

\n

‘We so rarely hear about positive birth experiences because they\u2019re not necessarily newsworthy’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And so I guess when I saw this video, that\u2019s what I thought of – a woman looking back at the moments before she crossed the rubicon and became something else entirely. <\/p>\n

When I was pregnant I developed an obsession with BirthTok – it\u2019s a whole seam of content devoted to birth stories, from first contraction to the euphoric moment where mother and child finally come face to face. Gruesome, gripping, more compelling than a Marvel film – we so rarely hear about positive birth experiences because they\u2019re not necessarily newsworthy but I guess that\u2019s what I was looking for, in all those hours of scrolling, a sign that it would all be okay. <\/p>\n

Seeing Meghan and Harry enjoying themselves in that hospital room, seeing Meghan posting about it as a joyous moment all these years later – it would have soothed my anxious soul in those months leading up to my own birth. Maybe we’ll see more of this candid content coming from the Sussexes. You know what, I’m here for it. <\/p>\n

ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Meghan Markle\u2019s recent Instagram post celebrating her daughter Lilibet\u2019s 4th birthday, she and Harry are in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[7709,1329,67623,1331,7721,7719,7718,1330,7720,1281,447,7710,519,67622,7711],"class_list":{"0":"post-160308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-british-royal-family","9":"tag-content-type-feature","10":"tag-contentid-0c633f0f-92a5-4dd7-b7cd-30f09dadcb00","11":"tag-displaytype-standard-article","12":"tag-duchess-of-sussex","13":"tag-duke-of-sussex","14":"tag-harry","15":"tag-locale-gb","16":"tag-meghan","17":"tag-meghan-markle","18":"tag-prince-harry","19":"tag-royal-families","20":"tag-royal-family","21":"tag-shorttitle-meghan-markles-pregnancy-dancing-video-is-joyful","22":"tag-uk-royal-family"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114630989147034589","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}