As I sat lazily on the couch this past Saturday night, I scrolled mindlessly through my instagram feed, tapping little love hearts onto my friends’ pictures (think cute kids, artfully directed food shots and random images of buildings thanks to my architect brother) until I saw it: the announcement that Her Royal Highness, Duchess Catherine was in labour.
“Eeeeeek!” I screeched to my husband, “the baby’s coming!”
Given we’re not pregnant, he looked confused, scrunching up his face in a question mark until I explained THE baby was being born, the lovely new Royal one. Rolling his eyes, he went back to the movie we were supposed to be watching together, while I, with new vigour, devoured as many stories as I could about the Duchess’ impending arrival.
I, the fierce Republican, who would love nothing more than to cut our historically outdated connections with the United Kingdom, have Royal Baby Fever.
My republican drive started young, around 8 or 9 years of age, as my inner-city primary school was asked to be part of a welcoming party for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth as she drove through the streets of Sydney on a windswept, grey day. We waited for hours, dressed in our best uniforms, and nearly missed the moment as she drove by, her right hand waving regally at us. It was disappointing at best, and I didn’t understand her substituting a broad hat for the tiara I imagined on her head. My republican beliefs were born.
They amplified after I was one of a group of children at my school – perhaps ironically, called ‘Crown Street’ – who earnestly yelled “Republic!” down the barrel of the camera, pitted against some private school girls who timidly proclaimed “Monarchy!” as they waved Australian flags. We were young, and as poor, inner-city kids we didn’t understand why people in a far-off land were our rulers – it seemed mightily unfair that they got to be in charge, not one of our own. The seed was sown, and my politics are still clear: the Royals are for Britain, not for the Land Down Under.
However, as much as I love the sound of an Australian republic, I do love a good Royal yarn. My grandfather was quintessentially British, and I suppose his endless talk of Elizabeth and Phillip, Charles and Di rubbed off on me somehow. My grandmother always had a well-thumbed copy of the latest Women’s Weekly lying around, and as a voracious reader I lapped up stories of the monarchy as fast as I could.
I may not want a Queen or King as our head of state, but I love hearing about the Royals, and a Royal pregnancy – well, Kate’s perfectly poised bump has had me enraptured from start to finish.
Truthfully, babies do make the best of kind of stories – filled with romance, love, anxiety, hope, fear and utter, pure, unabated joy. My kind of evening in is watching a show like ‘One Born Every Minute’, the raw humanity draws me in every time, and I never fail to tear up as the newborn babes let their first cry out of their tiny rosebud mouths.
The week before the Princess’ birth was filled with utter tragedy: the deaths of more than 7000 Nepalese after a devastating earthquake ripped their country in two; the state-sanctioned murder of two young Australians in Indonesia.
Royalist or not, the Princess’ birth gives us hope. That there is something to smile at, that the circle of life continues. Hope that there are good news stories, not just endless tales of tragedy and desperation.
Her birth gives us hope, as does the birth of every baby. My face hurts from grinning when I welcome a friend’s new bundle of joy, and I openly cry whenever I meet a newborn for the first time. I just love how life keeps creating life, in these perfectly formed packages.
I may be a republican, but a newborn baby – no matter which family they’re born into – is something to get excited about. The royal baby is everybody’s baby: a reminder of your own babies, a wish for a child not yet born, a perfectly-wrapped story of love and romance.
Welcome to the world, baby girl.
