On Tuesday, Meghan Markle’s new podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, returned for its second episode, and during her conversation with Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, the duchess opened up about raising her children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet of Sussex.
While discussing the challenges of balancing work and her home life, Meghan said that both her children were home sick from school while the episode was being recorded, one with flu and one with RSV. After Saujani said she agreed with Meghan’s past comment that her most important title is “Mom,” Meghan said that her parenting style is very intensive, adding that she occasionally chooses to spend more time with the children, even when her husband Prince Harry suggests she take a break.
“Oh my gosh. I love being a mom so much. It’s my favorite thing,” she said. “It is the thing where you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I just need a break. I just need a minute. I just need a minute.’ The second you step into the room, you go, oh!” she said. “Then my husband’s like, ‘My love, can you just give yourself a minute? Why don’t you go work out? Why don’t you go take a bath? I’m like, I know, but I just want to cuddle.”
Meghan said she thought parenting during the pandemic might have affected her approach. “It’s the parenting paradigm where it is so full on, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” the duchess said. “The pandemic may have been the thing that shifted this, when working from home and parenting from home where they are completely converged, can feel incredibly overwhelming.”
During the interview with Saujani—who founded Girls Who Code in 2012 and is now founder and CEO of Moms First, which organizes for improved paid leave policies—thanked Meghan for supporting her projects. They revealed that they first met when Saujani visited Meghan at Kensington Palace in 2018, when Girls Who Code was preparing to launch in the UK. “I remember you came in, we sat in the audience room, and I just said, tell me all about it,” the duchess said. “It was an eye-opener for me of so many other ways in which women were showing up for young girls.” A few years later, Meghan became an early advocate for Moms First through the Archewell Foundation, and Saujani said the duchess helped the organization get off the ground.
Meghan’s podcast, which is produced by Lemonada Media, premiered on April 8, and its first episode featured an interview with Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd where Meghan revealed that she had suffered from postpartum preeclampsia. During the second episode, Meghan discussed her feelings following a miscarriage in 2020, which she wrote about in a 2021 essay for The New York Times. In her conversation with Saujani, she mentioned the feeling of letting go of something she had hoped for, comparing it to the feelings associated with a career change.
“You’ve spoken publicly about as you were doing Girls Who Code, all the interpersonal things that were happening for you at that time, and the miscarriages you’ve experienced,” she said. “I’ve spoken about the miscarriage [Harry and I] 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 okay at a certain point to let something go, something that you planned to love for a long time.”