The new Princess of Wales opened up about the daunting decision while chatting with new parents at the Royal Surrey County Hospital. Like any loving parents, Kate Middleton and Prince William took great care in naming their little princes and princess. The new Princess of Wales, 40, spoke about the pressure she and her husband felt when choosing names for their three children while visiting the maternity unit of the Royal Surrey County Hospital on Wednesday.
Kate was shown around by Amy Stubbs, deputy director of midwifery, who tells PEOPLE that the royal was easy for new parents to connect with. “She was very relatable. She talked a lot about how it felt for her when she became a mother,” Stubbs says. While meeting with new parents and hospital personnel, the director says that Kate drew from her own experience while sharing stories. A mom of three, Princess Kate shares Prince George, 9, Princess Charlotte, 7, and Prince Louis, 4, with Prince William.
“She just really talked about her own children including how they chose their names. A lot of the new mums and dads are thinking about how to choose names for their babies, and they spoke with her about how Kate and William made their choice,” Stubbs explains. “She said they were their favorite names and that obviously the world was waiting for them to name their children — and that felt like quite a big pressure!” Stubbs adds with a laugh. Princess Kate visited the Guilford, England hospital to advance her understanding of the best practices in maternity care, as she works to further improvements for mothers and children across the United Kingdom.
“She was just delightful. She spent a lot of time talking to a lot of the staff and meeting mums and dadas and new babies across the whole service,” says Stubbs. “It was a really joyful for everyone to have that opportunity and hugely validating for us as a service for her to take the time out to visit us.” The healthcare professional tells PEOPLE it’s “fantastic” to feel the royal’s support for the critical issue of maternity services. Accelerating her long-term mission of helping children and families, Kate launched the Centre for Early Childhood in June 2021 and continues to advocate for greater awareness of the importance of early childhood development.
“She was particularly interested in maternal mental health and how we are supporting maternal mental wellbeing through pregnancy and in the early post-natal periods,” Stubbs says. “She particularly spent a lot of time talking to staff and families about that aspect of care and how that felt for them.” In recent years, much of Princess Kate’s work has been focused on early childhood development, which has been inspired by her own experiences as a mother of three. Kate has focused much of her work in recent years on mothers, babies and early childhood, revealing in 2020 that she turned to “hypnobirthing” for all three of her deliveries. While navigating hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of morning sickness during each pregnancy, the princess said she took it upon herself to learn about the birthing method.
“I got very bad morning sickness, so I’m not the happiest of pregnant people,” she shared in a revealing interview on the Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast in February 2020. Kate welcomed her son George Alexander Louis on July 22, 2013. His sister Charlotte Elizabeth Diana followed on May 2, 2015. Younger brother Louis Arthur Charles was born on April 23, 2018. Like Princess Diana before her, the royal mom had all of her children in the Lindo Wing at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.