Meghan Markle has revealed she has an ‘amazing’ nanny for her children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet who has been with the family for five years.
The Duchess of Sussex said the nanny, whom she did not identify, takes her son and daughter from their home in Montecito to their different schools on some mornings.
It comes a fortnight after Meghan claimed how she felt ‘jugging’ working and being a mother can be ‘incredibly overwhelming’, adding: ‘Oh my gosh, I just need a break.’
In an appearance on The Jamie Kern Lima Show which was released on Monday, Meghan praised her nanny after being asked: ‘What’s your morning routine look like?’
She said: ‘This morning was different because Archie has a cold so he’s home from school, but I get up at 6:30 and gives me a minute to – I wish I could say I woke up and meditated – I don’t do that, I have the monitors on so I could hear both the kids.
‘They get up at 7 so I give myself a little bit of time to either put on workout clothes brush my teeth, get both of them, up I get them dressed get them downstairs, make breakfast and then if I haven’t done their lunch boxes the night before then do that.
‘I love doing lunch boxes, it makes me very happy and writing a little note in their lunch boxes… If I don’t have meetings in the morning then I try to do school drop off.
‘They’re at two different schools, so that’s a big circuit. So from 6:30 in the morning on drop off mornings for me I’m not home till 9. And then after that I’ll just jump into meetings.
Meghan appeared on The Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast in an episode released on Monday
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex with their son Archie and daughter Lilibet in December 2021
‘And then on other days then I’ll wake up and get them all set and then our amazing nanny who’s been with us for five years, she’ll take them to school for us and then, yeah, we always try to…’
Smiling, she added: ‘I know, that’s morning, that’s the morning, that gets you to 9am.’
Two weeks ago in the second episode of her new Confessions Of A Female Founder podcast, Meghan spoke about ‘juggling it all’ and nursing a poorly Archie and Lilibet at home.
The Duchess revealed how, at the time of recording, one of her children had RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) – a common cause of coughs and colds – and the other influenza A – a form of flu.
Meghan, talking about the challenge of being a working mother, said: ‘With that comes the woman who is juggling it all and doing it all from home, being confident enough to tell the truth about what’s going on, because you can’t give grace to someone in the same way if you just have no sense of it…
‘My kids, for example, right now, one has RSV, the other has influenza A.
‘I hear a little pitter patter of feet upstairs, home from school, you know cough syrup all night and rubbing the back, and … we still find a way to show up for both.’
The Duchess also shared how being a ‘mom’ was her ‘favourite title’ and how Harry tries to encourage her to take a break from her children.
‘Now you have the title of mom. Just like me. Favourite title. Love it. Oh my gosh. I love being a mom so much,’ Meghan said. ‘It’s my favourite thing. It is the thing where you’re like ‘Oh my gosh, I just need a break. I just need a minute’.
Lorren Khumalo, Archie’s former nanny, appeared in Harry and Meghan’s Netflix show in 2022
Lorren Khumalo is pictured with baby Archie in Frogmore Cottage, in their Netflix documentary
‘And the second you step into the other room, you go, oh but let me scroll through pictures of them endlessly on my phone, and… 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. It’s the parenting paradigm where it is so full-on and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
‘But I think what’s really key about what you said, and 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.’
In episode one of the eight-part Lemonada Media podcast, Meghan spoke about the benefits of working from home, saying of Lili: ‘If she wakes up and wants to find me, she knows where to find me, even if my door is closed to the office.
‘She’ll be sitting there on my lap during one of these meetings with a grid of all the executives… I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
During Harry and Meghan’s tell-all Netflix documentary in December 2022, the Duchess spoke about Archie’s former nanny Lorren Khumalo.
Ms Khumalo, a paediatric nurse and consultant, took care of Archie as a newborn back in the UK and described the couple as ‘really hands-on parents’.
Meghan revealed the back of Princess Lilibet in a photo she posted on Instagram on Sunday
Another photo posted by Meghan on Sunday showed the back of her son Prince Archie
In the fourth episode of the show, Ms Khumalo said: ‘I had this phone call and they were like ‘Prince Harry and Meghan would like to see you and speak to you about looking after Archie’. I was like: ‘Hang on a minute, I need to sit down’.’
‘When I arrived at Frogmore Cottage, I see this guy, he’s tall, he’s ginger and he’s walking barefoot and I have gone and bought a new pair of shoes in Clarks and suddenly whatever I thought or felt, the formality just sort of slipped and I felt so at ease,’ she added.
‘They were really hands-on parents, in the morning when he (Archie) woke up, first thing, mum and dad would come in, they would be with their baby, she would feed him, and then after that I’ll take over and normally we would go for a morning walk.’
Meghan said: ‘She (Ms Khumalo) said: ‘Is it OK if I like tie him on my back with a mud cloth like we do in Zimbabwe?’
‘(I said) ‘yes let’s do that!’ She just took care of Archie and she took care of us, she definitely took care of me.’
This followed claims in Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand’s 2020 book ‘Finding Freedom’ that Meghan and Harry let go of Archie’s night nurse during her second shift for being ‘unprofessional and irresponsible’.
The book stated: ‘Meghan and Harry felt they were forced to let the nurse go in the middle of her second night of work for being unprofessional and irresponsible.’
It went on to say that they hired a second night nurse who ‘did a fine job,’ but the experience with their first nanny meant ‘neither found themselves comfortable sleeping through the night without going to check on Archie regularly’.
A few weeks later, the couple chose to hire a daytime nanny and took on the night duty themselves, according to the book.
Meghan appeared on the podcast hosted by Jamie Kern Lima, the co-founder of IT Cosmetics
During the interview with Kern Lima on Monday, Meghan said was enjoying a new ‘honeymoon’ feeling with her husband since the pair got ‘a little bit of breathing space’ after stepping back from their royal duties.
The Duchess said the couple struggled to fully enjoy one another’s company early in their relationship as they were quickly put into ‘the trenches’.
In Meghan’s appearance on the podcast hosted by entrepreneur Kern Lima, the co-founder of IT Cosmetics, Meghan also said she has been able to better appreciate her relationship with Harry in more recent years.
She said: ‘You have to imagine at the beginning, everyone has, like, butterflies. Then we immediately went into the trenches together. Yeah, right out of the gate, like six months into dating.
‘So now, seven years later, when you have a little bit of breathing space, you can just enjoy each other in a new way, and that’s why I feel like it’s more of a honeymoon period for us now.’
The Duchess also praised her husband for keeping the family ‘safe’, adding: ‘He’s just out there, just constant, like he’s just going to do whatever he can to make sure that our family is safe and protected and we’re uplifted and still make time for date nights.
‘He’s also a fox. If you haven’t noticed, my husband’s very, very handsome. But his heart is even more beautiful.’
Meghan became emotional when talking about Archie and Lilibet in another section of the podcast, and revealed that she sends emails to secret addresses she has created for them to read when they are older.
‘Before I go to bed, almost every night, I email them, like, here’s your report card from today, or, oh my gosh, wasn’t it the funniest thing this morning?
‘Or here’s a picture of you two having breakfast, or here’s you playing.
‘The things that you’re not going to frame, the things that you’re not going to put pen to paper in a journal, but which they will end up seeing at one point in their life, maybe when they’re 16 or when they’re 18.
‘I’ll say, here’s an email that I’ve been keeping for you. Here’s everything and every moment that I wanted to tell you how much I love you and, like, how proud I am of you.’
The podcast also resulted in sources close to Meghan revealing the Duchess used her HRH style privately but not for commercial purposes.
The revelation flouts the agreement made with Buckingham Palace when the Sussexes stepped down as senior working royals five years ago.
Controversy has grown over Meghan’s use of HRH after it emerged she sent a gift basket to Kern Lima last year, with a monogrammed card reading: ‘With Compliments of HRH The Duchess of Sussex’.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex at the Time100 Summit in New York City on April 23
Kern Lima showed an image of the present in footage of her podcast interview with Meghan. A source described the basket as a ‘personal gift’.
It contained a jar of Meghan’s jam which she has started selling as part of her As Ever lifestyle business brand.
As part of their Megxit negotiations with the Palace, Meghan and the Duke of Sussex agreed to stop using ‘Her Royal Highness’ and ‘His Royal Highness’ at the end of March 2020.
They still retain the styles, with Harry having had his since birth, but they are essentially held in abeyance, as is the case for the Duke of York, who also no longer uses his HRH style.
The duchess’s representative denied on Monday that the couple used them, but a source said yesterday that the Sussexes did not use HRH publicly but retained the style, and did not use it for commercial purposes.
In January 2020, the late Queen issued a statement after Harry and Meghan announced they wanted to step down as senior royals, saying that ‘together we have found a constructive and supportive way forward for my grandson and his family’.
Buckingham Palace outlined ‘the new arrangement’ for the ‘next chapter’ in Harry and Meghan’s lives.
It included the statement: ‘The Sussexes will not use their HRH titles as they are no longer working members of the royal family.’
No documents were signed or laws passed, but the decision was seen as a blanket ban, with no suggestion that Harry and Meghan were permitted to use the style privately.
Amid the growing controversy, Meghan spoke of her ‘fear of failure’ and revealed she was given business advice by Oprah Winfrey.
In her latest Confessions of a Female Founder podcast released yesterday, the Duchess claimed she was an over-achiever because her blood type is A positive, and admitted ignoring her own advisers to follow her gut feelings.
Meghan told her friend Kern Lima, who she interviewed in return: ‘I feel like we haven’t talked about our blood type, but yours is probably an A positive like mine, because I was like ‘Even my blood is over-achieving’.’
She added of her jam-making: ‘At the beginning, I just liked making jam. All I liked to do was just make jam and preserves.
‘And it went from ‘OK, I’m going to share this jam with lots of friends and family’ to ‘People really like it and it brings me joy, so maybe I can share it more broadly’.
‘But even then I was in so much fear of failure or opinion that I wasn’t thinking big enough at first.’
