So will Kate choose breast over bottle? Recent Royal tradition suggests she will... but things were very different in the past
- Princess Diana, the Queen and the Queen mother all breastfed
- Been Queen Victoria handed all her nine children to wet nurses
Will the Duchess breastfeed her son? Recent Royal tradition – and her own very modern outlook – suggest she will.
Princess Diana insisted on breastfeeding both William and Harry. The Queen Mother breastfed the Queen following her birth in 1926, and the Queen continued the practice with each of her four children.
However, a case of the measles forced her to wean Prince Charles when he was less than two months old. And the glamorous Princess Margaret found the act rather distasteful and chose to feed both her children, David and Sarah, by bottle.
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Will she? Won't she? Recent Royal tradition - and her own very modern outlook - suggest the Duchess of Cambridge will choose to breastfed her new baby son. But in the past many Royal mothers chose not to
Indeed, it’s only in the last century that the Royals have even considered natural feeding as an option.
Despite having nine children, Queen Victoria found the idea disgusting and said breastfeeding was the ‘ruin’ of refined ladies.
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It was perhaps unsurprising that when her daughters Vicky and Alice decided they wanted to follow the changing times and suckle their own babies, they tried to keep it a secret from their mother.
When she learned about it, Queen Victoria was furious, even writing to Princess Alice to tell her that she had named one of her dairy cows after her.
Against it: Despite having nine children, Queen Victoria found the idea of breastfeeding disgusting and said it was the 'ruin' of refined ladies
Indeed, for centuries, breastfeeding was typically shunned by noblewomen, with royal babies being handed over to wet nurses almost as soon as the cord was cut.
By the 11th century in most royal palaces across Europe, there was usually a team of lactating wet nurses on hand to make sure a royal baby could be fed on demand while the Queen resumed her duties.
The choice of wet nurse was an important one as it was believed that her milk could influence a baby’s temperament.
It meant that the most suitable wet nurses were often handpicked from the aristocracy, although women from wealthy families were a good second option.
The future James I was breastfed by Lady Reres, his mother’s lady-in-waiting, while the youngest daughter of Charles I was fed by Lady Dalkeith in 1644.
Traditionally, boys spent longer being breastfed than their sisters – often for a couple of years – as they were considered to be more dependent and fussy.
According to historians, the last British monarch to be suckled by a wet nurse was George VI, the Queen’s father, who was born in 1895.
Many studies show the benefits to mother and child of breastfeeding. The latest indicates it protects babies against developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Researchers at Tel Aviv University, Israel, said children who were bottle fed at three months were three times more likely to have ADHD than those who were breastfed.
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