Princess Eugenie's parenting 'struggle' and how Sarah Ferguson coped with it

Princess Eugenie has announced she is expecting her third child with husband Jack Brooksbank this summer — with King Charles said to be "delighted" by the news. Eugenie already has two sons, August and Ernest, aged five and two respectively, who are "very excited" to welcome a new sibling. The 36-year-old mum shared a snap of her boys holding a baby scan with her 1.7 million Instagram followers, captioning it: "Baby Brooksbank 2026!" Eugenie opened up about motherhood last May when she appeared on the Lessons From Our Mothers podcast , where she revealed the aspects of parenting she occasionally finds difficult. Discussing the challenges, she said: "For me it's similar, trying to be perfect, not saying that my mum (Sarah Ferguson) was perfect, but I guess trying to make the perfect world for your children when you don't hit the mark, feeling that guilt. "And so I think that's something that I struggle with or is definitely a challenge where the guilt of maybe not being there the whole time or missing out on a moment or when I lose my temper. "I think there's something to remember that little people are little people and we put a lot of old grown-up things like 34 years of grown-upness onto little people sometimes. "At night, for their bath time routine, you know how stressful that is, and it's because I like to brush my teeth and brush my hair and have a bath and put my moisturiser on because I'm 34 but this three-and-a-half year old little boy does not want to do any of that. "And it's to be okay, the bath might be missed one night or tooth brushing might not happen and to go that's fine because they are little people learning and they can't be perfect." Rounding off her thoughts, she added: "So I think it is just constantly, and that's what mum always did, she always was the kid as well, and she'd much rather sit and talk to a bunch of kids than she would to talk to grown-ups. "She always still says now, 'no grown-ups', so I think for us, as mums, for me especially, is to, the guilt side of things, not let that consume the days, because the days are so precious." Her third child, due "in the summer", will sit 15th in line to the throne, though the baby will not hold an HRH title. The newborn will become the 15th great-grandchild of the late Queen Elizabeth II — and only the third to arrive since her passing in 2022 at the age of 96. The child will also be the fifth grandchild of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor , following his other daughter Princess Beatrice, who welcomed a baby girl last January.