The Duchess of Cambridge isn’t the only woman presumed to give birth this week

AS PRINCESS Kate prepares to give birth any moment now, so does Jo Stanley’s friend Sarah. Same, same really, except for the lack of media camping outside her home.

The other (less royal) baby on the way

THERE’S a very important baby arriving in the next week or so. We think maybe around April 21.

We don’t know what sex it is, but we know it will be a much-loved younger sibling for its strawberry blond big brother, and a treasured second born for Sarah and Dave. Oh and Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge are having a kid at that time too.

I’ve only had one baby, but I’ve been surrounded by pregnant women and newborns since my high school friend, Megan, bravely was the first of my mates to procreate 18 years ago. I’m an expert in expectation. I know the right questions to ask and the appropriate level of honesty, especially when it comes to first time mums.

Apparently, “it hurt so much I thought I was going to die” is unhelpful and insensitive to those yet to go through it. But questions such as “How are you feeling?”, “Is the Doctor happy?”, “Have you had any involuntary audible public farting?” are my forte. I’m so understanding and compassionate, you’d think I actually care.

And so not surprisingly, I was the person my friend Sarah rang when she discovered she will potentially share her delivery date with a Royal. I wouldn’t say she was unhappy about it. I’d say she was bilious with rage. Or maybe that was her heartburn.

Either way, I had a very difficult time talking a teary and slightly incontinent friend around from thinking not a living soul will care about her baby because of “that stupid perfect-haired princess”. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that because it’s her second baby, no one will really care much anyway.

However, as I am a good friend, I thought it would help to allow Sarah to purge (in a way that wasn’t sparked by the smell of alcohol on her husband’s breath.) To this end, I bring you our (abridged) list titled ‘Things Kate Has Not Had To Struggle Through In This Pregnancy’.

1. All domestic duties including cooking dinner for her 3-year-old, Archie, because her bloke’s doing night shift, peeling veggies at the kitchen bench, wondering if it’s possible for her swollen ankles to actually be wider than her knees.

2. Dragging her exhausted body around the supermarket, hoisting her maternity jeans up at every second step because there is no known elastic that can defeat the gravitational force that is her chafing thighs.

3. Having strangers rub her enormous pregnant stomach while standing in the checkout line at said supermarket, because apparently once you’re pregnant you become public property, and because people who aren’t Royal don’t have bodyguards.

4. Picking up the family labrador, Malcolm’s, prodigious poo.

I know the world, me included, hailed Katherine when she left the hospital with baby George, because she was just a normal mum with a normal post-pregnancy floppy belly. But she’s not normal in as much as she’s a Duchess and if at any point she can’t be bothered even doing up her own bra, there’ll be some Lady-in-Waiting to pick up the slack. For that reason, I get kind of sick of all the carry on. I’d rather make a fuss over mothers of the non-Royal kind.

No one is camping out the front of Sarah’s hospital waiting to broadcast news of the birth. No one is making bets on whether she’s having a boy or a girl. And certainly no one is debating what the kid will be called, mainly because Dave has told anybody who’ll listen he plans to call the baby Seminyak, for obvious conception-related reasons.

But this kid, grandson of Phyllis, social secretary for the bowls club; son of Dave the nurse and Sarah the bookkeeper; sibling to the future Junior Soccer Club Best and Fairest and second in line to the potty. This kid won’t know it’s not the world’s most anticipated baby. It will only know it is loved beyond measure.

I said the same thing to Sarah and she wept like I’d taken away her stash of anchovies. Next time I’m going to screen her call.

Originally published as The Duchess of Cambridge isn’t the only woman presumed to give birth this week