ON Sunday morning, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry announced the birth of his daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor. She had been born Friday at 11:40 a.m. in Santa Barbara, California. They will call her Lili.
"She weighed 7 lbs 11 oz. Both mother and child are well and healthy, and settling at home," the couple's spokesperson said in a statement. "Lili is called after her great-grandmother, Her Majesty The Queen, whose family nickname is Lilibet. Her middle name, Diana, had been selected to honor her beloved late grandmother, The Princess of Wales."
The new baby is now eighth in line for the British throne, behind her brother Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, her father, her grandfather Prince Charles, her uncle Prince William, along with her cousins Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis.
On February 14, the couple announced that they were expecting their second child with a set of photos that showed them embracing under a tree in their Montecito property, nearly 1 year following their high-profile exit from the royal household. It arrived less than three months following Meghan wrote an article for its New York Times where she spoke a July 2020 miscarriage, titled"The Losses We Share. "
A couple of days following the pregnancy statement, Meghan and Harry sat for a headline-making interview with Oprah Winfrey at which they announced they were expecting a woman. Harry said he sensed"amazing" and"grateful" when he saw the ultrasound. "To possess any kid, any one or any two, could have been wonderful," he added. "However, to have a boy and then a girl, what more could you ask for? Now we've got our loved ones. We have got the four of us and both dogs, and it's great."
After the couple's first child, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, was born May 2019, the couple announced the birth on the now-defunct Sussex Royal Instagram page. The new family of three posed for pictures before a select band of reporters near their Windsor house two days following his birth, and just shared the new baby's name after that--a fracture in royal tradition that was an early signal of Harry and Meghan planned to handle their lives differently. Together with the new baby today one of very few members of the House of Windsor to be born on American soil, it's even clearer than it was for Archie her life is going to take a different path than most recent royal infants.
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