"It's so hard": Kate Middleton candidly opens up about the difficulties of being a parent.

The Duchess of Cambridge has opened up about her struggles with motherhood this week.

Speaking during a visit to the charity Family Action on Tuesday, the mother of Prince George, 5, Princess Charlotte, 3, and 9-month-old Prince Louis, admitted she finds motherhood as challenging as anyone else, even though she has help with her nanny, Maria Turrion Borallo.

“It’s so hard. You get a lot of support with the baby as a mother particularly in the early days, but after the age of 1 it falls away,” she said. “After that there isn’t a huge amount — lots of books to read. Everybody experiences the same struggle.”

 

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The Duchess of Cambridge received a posy after a visit to @family_action today. The Duchess was in Lewisham, South London to launch a new support line called FamilyLine which uses a network of volunteers from across the country to support parents & carers through phone calls, email and texts. The Duchess’ visit to @family_action furthers her work in supporting children from their earliest years – HRH is currently driving a research project to establish what more can be done in across the UK to give children their best possible start in life.

A post shared by Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) on Jan 22, 2019 at 7:40am PST

The Duchess was present to help launch the U.K. support line for Family Action, which is volunteer-based and designed to support parents and caregivers via telephone calls, email and text messaging.

People reports that Deidre, from Islington, north London, and her aunt, Dawn Daley, 46, discussed with the Duchess how the service helped their family, which includes Deidre’s two children, both of whom have the genetic disorder neurofibromatosis.

“When she came in it felt like just another friend,” Dawn said.

“She was really nice, she was easy to talk to and interacted with us all. And she listened. She was saying we were brave to be able to speak about our stories and come out and speak about what’s happening with us. She was very compassionate.”

The Duchess of Cambridge has previously spoken about motherhood. In 2017, while speaking to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, she said, “Personally, becoming a mother has been such a rewarding and wonderful experience. However, at times it has also been a huge challenge — even for me who has support at home that most mothers do not.”

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