“Well, you just get on with it.” That was the Queen’s brisk, seven-word answer when a visibly pregnant Jacinda Ardern asked how she had managed pregnancy and childbirth while monarch. The former New Zealand prime minister, then seven months along, had cornered the late Queen at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London. Speaking to the Times, Ardern recalled the moment: “She said in a rather resolute way, ‘Well, you just get on with it.’ She was right. What she was saying was there’s no big secret to it, you just take every day as it comes. That simple, practical advice was exactly what I needed.”
Ardern, now 45, was just 37 when she became New Zealand’s leader. She went on to become only the second democratically elected world leader to give birth while in office – a distinction she shares with the Queen, who gave birth to all four of her children during her reign. The two women, despite their vastly different paths, recognised a common challenge.
“Queen Elizabeth II told a pregnant Jacinda Ardern: 'Well, you just get on with it'”
Ardern said that being a first-time mother while prime minister did not make her feel exceptional. “I had this particularly high-profile role, but I didn’t feel special or unique,” she said. “I felt like I was part of this very large club of women trying to make it work.”
In May 2025, writing in the Guardian, Ardern described her astonishment at the public reaction to her pregnancy. Despite bracing for judgment and scrutiny – she was new to the job, pregnant and unmarried – she was met instead with an outpouring of warmth, including a baby blanket made up of 24 squares. “I had braced for the worst,” she wrote. “I was a public figure, used to judgment and scrutiny. Now I was pregnant and unwed. I was also new to the job. If people wanted to have a go at me, they had plenty of reason…”