Thoughts on Meghan Markle's delivery: A White Dress?

It was the white dress - just two days after the delivery of Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor - that was the real head-scratcher.

Who wears a white dress right after giving birth to a baby?

Every woman who has given birth knows how incredibly messy it is, not just during birth itself (sweat, blood, urine, poo), but afterwards. 

The first few days after a routine vaginal delivery, most women experience a bright red flow that gradually turns pinkish to brownish, as the body rids itself of uterine tissue that is no longer needed. Diarrhoea and urinary leakage are common too.  Most women wear thick speciality garments when they leave the hospital. 

Caesarian deliveries are also bloody: a C-section is major surgery, which is why many doctors avoid them unless medically necessary. Bleeding or discharge around the wound is always a risk. 

Up top, leakage of breast milk is a worry, as a new mother's milk comes in so she can nourish her child.

A white dress? 

Men, if you find this hard to wrap your head around, picture yourself in white trousers two days after hernia or prostate surgery. 

In white trousers on television.

.

A few more oddities

Of course, this wasn't the only odd aspect of Archie's delivery. A few other notes:

• No place of birth was disclosed, and there were contradictory reports about where and when the baby might have been born.

• No one was seen leaving Harry and Meghan's home at Frogmore Cottage in the hours before the birth, even though press was camped out waiting for the overdue baby. 

• No members of the medical team were named on the birth announcement placed on an easel outside Buckingham Palace. Traditionally, the announcement includes the name and signature of all of the doctors who helped deliver the baby.

• The announcement stated that the Queen and the Royal Family were "delighted at the news" that Meghan had given birth. It suggests that they had been told about a birth, but could not confirm that it had happened. When the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth in the Royal-approved Lindo Wing, the announcement said simply that "The Duchess of Cambridge has been safely delivered" of a son and daughter, followed by a specific time of birth.

• The baby received no title, not even the "Earl" title he could not be denied as the son of a Duke.

• Archie was not given the 21-gun salute customary for newborn Royal babies, and bells were not run at Westminster Abbey.

• No official merchandise was issued to commemorate Archie's birth, as it was for all three Cambridge babies. 

• The press arrangements around the birth were chaotic; the press was told the duchess had gone into labor about 8 hours after she had supposedly already given birth. The first interview with Harry was given to a reporter who had run into him in a car park a few minutes earlier, and it was held, for some reason, in front of the Queen's stables. 

• When Harry and Meghan gave their first joint interview at Windsor two days after the announced birth of the child, Harry made an offhand remark that "they change so much in the first two weeks." Was the baby he was holding not a newborn? The line was later cut from online versions of the video. 

• During the interview, Meghan reached over to pat the baby on the top of his head. Most parents avoid touching the soft spot on the top of a newborn's head - the fontanelle, where the skull has not yet hardened. 

• The child's name was unusual and unexpected. "Archie" was variously described as a tribute to Meghan's dead cat, a tribute to a military commander Harry served with in Afghanistan, and an anagram of Meghan or Charles' names. It was also the name of a character within the sad life of the first Duke of Sussex, a redhead who married against his parents' wishes. Archibald was the name of his wife's lover, the man who was probably the real father of the Duke's children.

• Six days after the reported birth, Meghan showed off what she called the baby's feet in an Instagram post. They were not the crumpled feet of a newborn, but the feet of a slightly older baby. 

The rumor mill in overdrive

Understandably, the rumor mill went into overdrive. Various sources suggested that the "Archie" who Harry and Meghan had shown off on TV was a realistic doll, and that a photo taken with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip admiring the baby was a Photoshop creation.

There was also some suggestion that the pair had been forced into announcing a birth after reaching what would have been the 42nd week of pregnancy, assuming Meghan was at 12 weeks when she upstaged Eugenie's wedding in October with her pregnancy announcement.

Some theorists suggested that the surrogate had not yet delivered the baby, so a fill-in was being used; others suggested that Meghan herself was still pregnant. (Although the bump she showed during her post-baby interview veered alarmingly to the left, suggesting she had put it on incorrectly, again.

Other observers noticed that Meg was back in her high heels only a couple of days after supposedly giving birth.

On Lipstick Alley, a poster who said she was a labor and delivery nurse said that seeing Meghan in her heels was what brought her over to #TeamPillow.

The poster wrote. "That baby has a C-section head (no cone shape, not squished especially from a first-time mother, no bruising or redness) however Meghan is wearing heels. You shouldn't wear heels immediately after a C-section due to heels altering your alignment in a way that stretches your abdomen. It would potentially rupture the incision."

Do the rumors bother the Sussexes?

Do these rumors bother Harry and Meghan? Perhaps they do, but they are the inevitable results of their constant "bending of the rules." "She likes to bend the rules," Thomas Markle recently said of his daughter. 

I have no answers, but it is all very strange. And nothing is stranger than that white dress.