LONDON — With royal fanfare tweeted instantly
around the world, Buckingham Palace on Monday announced the birth of a boy to
Prince William and his wife, the former Kate Middleton, placing a framed
proclamation on an easel at the palace gates.
“Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge
was safely delivered of a son at 4:24 today,” the statement proclaimed, nearly
five hours after the actual birth. “Her royal highness and the child are both
doing well.”
A palace statement said
the child weighed eight pounds six ounces and that William had been present.
Mother and baby would remain in the hospital overnight.
No name was immediately
announced. The child is third in line to the throne.
The announcement came
more than 12 hours after Buckingham Palace said early Monday morning that the
31-year-old duchess had gone to St. Mary’s Hospital in London in the early
stages of labor. Then not another word emerged from royal officials, beyond the
bland assurance from palace officials that matters were “progressing normally.”
Queen Elizabeth offered
a faint signal that an early development might be at hand when she left her
preferred London quarters at Windsor Palace and drove the 20 miles to
Buckingham Palace. That put her in position to be on hand, her royal standard
fluttering, when the birth was announced.
A message on Twitter was
the first of a series of carefully scripted disclosures that culminated in the
announcement of an event that appeared to be drawing unparalleled media coverage,
even in the annals of Britain’s headline-making royal family. Live-streaming
cameras have been trained on the hospital, and even on the easel where the
announcement of the birth was formally posted.
“Her royal highness the
Duchess of Cambridge has been admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington,
London, in the early stages of labour,” said a message from Clarence House, the
official residence of the duchess and her husband, Prince William, the Duke of
Cambridge.
The duchess had traveled
by car to the hospital from another royal residence, Kensington Palace, a
second message said. Reporters outside the hospital said the couple had slipped
in through a side entrance, largely unobserved by the waiting press corps.
The couple met in the
early 2000s, when both were students at the University of St. Andrews in
Scotland, and their relationship, which was later hailed as a fairy tale union,
proceeded sporadically for several years until their wedding in April 2011.
In some ways, the
phantom of William’s mother, the late Princess Diana, has hovered over the
couple, and he has frequently made it clear that he wants to protect his wife
from the intense media scrutiny associated with his mother.
Nevertheless, for weeks,
photographers and camera crews have camped out with stepladders and other
equipment outside St. Mary’s, where William, now a Royal Air Force
search-and-rescue helicopter pilot, was himself born in June 1982. His brother,
Harry, was born there in 1984.
The period preceding the
birth, however, was marked by a display of restraint among Britain’s usually
aggressive tabloids, with no sign of photographs of the royal couple from
clandestine stakeouts.
Intrusive and highly
competitive coverage of royal events was common for decades. But Britain’s
tabloids have been chastened by public opprobrium resulting from a
phone-hacking scandal that led to broad scrutiny by Parliament, the public and
the police of the way the media operate.
The baby is expected to
be known formally as the Prince of Cambridge. In the line of succession, he
will be third after Prince Charles, 64, and William, 31. Prince Harry will be
fourth.
The excitement over the
birth has been depicted as offering a likely counterpoint to Britain’s economic
austerity, buoying a public mood that has been elevated by a series of sporting
successes in cricket, rugby and cycling after London hosted the 2012 Olympic
and Paralympic Games. An unusual heat wave, meanwhile, has brought picnickers
and strollers out in droves across the land in parks, on beaches and at heaths
and wilderness areas.
The medical team in
charge of the birth included two senior royal gynecologists, Marcus Setchell
and Alan Farthing, news reports said.
The duchess was in the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s
Hospital, a private obstetric unit charging about $7,500 for normal delivery
facilities over 24 hours, apart from consultants’ fees running at about $9,000.
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