Is Duchess Meghan pregnant? Twitter and tabloids claim to know

It’s the bane of being royal and newly-married  in the internet age: Twitter and tabloid media will obsess over your midsection and pronounce you pregnant – over and over, until one day, like a broken clock, they finally get it right. 

So, just short of four months since the former Meghan Markle married Prince Harry, the newly minted HRH the Duchess of Sussex is getting the tabloid treatment. 

“In very happy news, a Kensington Palace insider has confirmed that the Duchess of Sussex is pregnant and has all but cleared her diary to ensure she rests as much as possible,” declared the Australian gossip weekly New Idea last week. 

Thus, the magazine said, the royal couple’s much-anticipated tour Down Under in October would have to be canceled.

Baloney, said Kensington Palace, without using that precise term.

On Monday, the palace issued more details of the Down Under tour, which will mark Harry and Meghan’s first big international trip in their new royal role as globe-trotting sweethearts of the Commonwealth.

The couple – both of them – will spend the last two weeks in October touring Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga, including an appearance at Harry’s Invictus Games in Sydney.  

Gossip media have always been keenly interested in royal pregnancies because they’re responding to their audiences – who are keenly interested in royal pregnancies. Remember that several of the more exuberant magazines, such as the American Life&Style, confidently predicted – twice – that Duchess Kate of Cambridge was about to give birth to twins.

“Kate Middleton Is Pregnant With Twins and She’s Already Picking out Names! (EXCLUSIVE),” shouted the headline on L&S last year. She didn’t. In April, she gave birth to a baby boy, Prince Louis. 

But interest in a possible Sussex pregnancy is even higher, in part due to their status as the royal couple of the moment, and in part due to Meghan’s age: She turned 37 in August. 

But the “evidence” being cited for her alleged pregnancy is pretty thin, and thinly sourced. To wit: Last week, when she and Harry attended a charity gala in London, she wore an electric blue Jason Wu frock with a ruffle detail at the waist.

“Is there already a bun in the oven?” speculated Hollywood Life.

On Twitter, people in no position to know looked at pictures of Meghan in the dress and claimed to have “feelings” that she is pregnant. 

But how could Meghan “look” pregnant in Jason Wu when only days before, at a charity gala performance of “Hamilton” in London, she wore a tuxedo-style mini-dress by Judith & Charles that showed off her slender waist. No baby bump in sight.  

Then a video surfaced of Harry and Meghan meeting some children at a different charity gala showing the prince, 33, rubbing his wife’s back – and that, too, was taken as evidence of…well, something. (Actually, the two of them show way more PDA than most royal couples, although usually she is the one who is patting his back.)

Kensington Palace, of course, declined to comment one way or another, but US Weekly cited an unnamed “insider” as pooh-poohing the pregnancy rumors. It was merely “an unflattering dress and wind,” the magazine reported. Harry and Meghan are focusing the first year of their marriage on their royal duties and charities and will start a family later.

To be sure, some royal-covering media are uncomfortable with the Sussex baby bump watch. Harper’s Bazaar points out that most people would not engage in this kind of rude speculation about anyone they actually know. 

“You get no points for spotting her condition first. It just makes you look like an insensitive jerk,” the magazine declared Monday. 

But the jerks are moving on to the next unconfirmed rumor of pregnancy: Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, a yoga teacher and social worker who lives in Los Angeles but is said to be moving to London any day now. 

On Sunday, the Daily Star, a London tabloid in the same media company as the tabloid Express and Sunday Express, reported that Ragland is taking “nanny classes” through a parenting center, Cradle Company, in Pasadena.  

She’s taking classes in breastfeeding, childbirth, newborn care, CPR and first aid because she plans to move to Kensington Palace to help Meghan once the first baby arrives, The Star claimed.

“Meghan wants to avoid hiring staff if possible once her first child arrives. The thought of having her mum move in with them and take on the role of baby nurse is the best possible solution to that.”

Alix Abbamonte, a spokeswoman for Cradle Company, declined to comment to USA TODAY. 

Never mind, the rest of the celebrity media crowd seized on this unconfirmed report as an excuse to discuss her alleged pregnancy. On Monday, the Express reported that Ragland quit her job as a social worker in May and “is expected to move to London as early as this month.”

Can any of this be officially confirmed? Not by the palace, which generally avoids announcing royal pregnancies until after the first 12 weeks have passed. (A recent exception: Duchess Kate, whose struggles with acute morning sickness caused her to cancel engagements early in her pregnancies, thus forcing the palace to make early announcements.)

Nor has Ragland confirmed anything. In fact, unlike Meghan’s father, Ragland’s ex-husband, Thomas Markle Sr, Meghan’s mother has been resolutely discrete: She has not given a media interview since her daughter’s relationship with Harry first emerged in 2016.   

Don’t expect her to change that position now.