Meghan Markle praises nanny for saving Archie from terrifying nursery fire
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Meghan Markle has opened up about a terrifying incident her family faced whilst on a royal tour to South Africa, when the nursery for her and Prince Harry's son, Archie, caught alight. Thankfully, Meghan explained on her new podcast, Archetypes, their nanny, Lauren, was able to 'save' Archie from coming to any harm as she kept the little one with her whilst making a snack in the kitchen (as the blaze simultaneously broke out).
Recalling the horrifying story to pal Serena Williams, on her new podcast Archetypes, Meghan explained how tough it was being a parent in the public eye, using that anecdote as an example of experiencing something scary as a mother and then having to plaster on a big smile and head back out into the world, acting like nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.
After attending an event and giving a speech, the Sussexes received the news that any parent would dread on the car ride home.
"Archie was what, four and a half months old. And the moment we landed, we had to drop him off at this housing unit that they had had us staying in. He was going to get ready to go down for his nap," Meghan shares on the podcast. "We immediately went to an official engagement in this township called Nyanga, and there was this moment where I'm standing on a tree stump and I'm giving this speech to women and girls, and we finish the engagement, we get in the car and they say there's been a fire at the residence. What? There's been a fire in the baby's room. What?"
She continued: "And so we're in the car. We had just landed, what, an hour or 2 hours before racing back? We get back, our amazing nanny, Lauren, [is] in floods of tears. She was supposed to put Archie down for his nap and she just said, 'You know what? Let me just go get a snack downstairs'."
Meghan added that it was Lauren's 'instinct' that saved Archie from being in the bedroom at the time of the fire. "She was from Zimbabwe and we loved that she would always tie him on her back with a mud cloth, and her instinct was like, 'Let me just bring him with me before I put him down'.
"In that amount of time that she went downstairs [...] the heater in the nursery caught on fire. There was no smoke detector. Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway, went in, fire extinguished. He was supposed to be sleeping in there."
Afterwards, Meghan says, everyone was 'in tears' and shaken up at the thought of what had just happened, and she adds that she found it difficult being expected to then carry on with the rest of the day's engagements as usual.
"Everyone's in tears, everyone's shaken," she recounts. "And what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement? I said, 'This doesn't make any sense'."
We're so glad that everyone was safe and that nobody came to any harm as a result of the fire.
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