When Kate Middleton Will Have Her Third Royal Baby, According to Gamblers
Royal baby betting is heating up, with UK bookies already placing odds on when Kate and William’s third pregnancy will be announced. (Photo: Getty Images/WPA Pool/Mary Turner)
Six-week-old Princess Charlotte is barely out of her Christening gown, but that hasn’t stopped royal watchers from guessing about when the palace will announce that a third heir to the British throne is on the way. Speculation is heating up so much, in fact, that the British bookmaking firm Coral has already laid out the odds.
STORY: Kate Middleton Gives Princess Charlotte a Royal Stroller Ride to Christening
A pregnancy will be most likely be revealed by the palace in 2016, with the odds set at 6-4 (in other words, a 40 percent chance), reports Redbook. If an impending royal birth is announced in 2017, Coral put the odds at 2-1.
What are these odds based on? Kate Middleton, the oldest of three, has told friends that she wants to have three children as well, so her brood can grow up as close as she and her siblings did, according to the UK Telegraph.
Middleton and younger sister Pippa are just 20 months apart, while her brother James arrived four years after Pippa. Prince William and his brother Harry are also close in age, a little more than two years apart; perhaps he too sees the advantage of having siblings who grow up together.
There’s another factor at play that cranks up the odds of a third heir to the British throne arriving in 2016: Middleton’s age. This year, she turned 33, and research shows that conceiving a healthy baby can take longer and be fraught with more complications by the time a woman hits her mid-30s.
STORY: The Science of Spacing Out Your Kids
The chances of conceiving a baby with chromosomal abnormalities begins to rise after age 35 as well. “Studies show that by about age 37, the odds of having a baby with a chromosomal disorder do go up, but the jump becomes steeper after age 40,” Dr. Deborah Gilboa, parenting and youth development expert, tells Yahoo Parenting.
Middleton may choose to space her pregnancies out every two years for health reasons as well. “For a mother’s health, the optimal amount of time between pregnancies is considered to be at least a year, so the babies are two years apart — giving her body time to restore her pelvic muscles and levels of nutrients such as calcium and iron, which are depleted during pregnancy,” says Gilboa.
The transition to being a sibling might be smoother for kids who are less than three years apart, adds Gilboa. “By age three, a child will remember what it was like not having a sibling, and that can make the switch to being a brother or sister possibly more problematic,” she says. Smart cookie Kate just might take this, as well as her own health, into account when she and Wills start mapping out the next addition to their family.
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