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| Duchess of Cambridge Is Hospitalized in ‘Early Stages of Labor’ | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| LONDON — After months of ever more frenetic anticipation, Britain’s royal family said on Monday that the Duchess of Cambridge, the former Kate Middleton, had gone to St. Mary’s Hospital in London’s Paddington district to prepare for the birth of her first child and was in the early stages of labor. | LONDON — After months of ever more frenetic anticipation, Britain’s royal family said on Monday that the Duchess of Cambridge, the former Kate Middleton, had gone to St. Mary’s Hospital in London’s Paddington district to prepare for the birth of her first child and was in the early stages of labor. |
| A brief message on Twitter was the first of a series of carefully scripted disclosures set to culminate in the announcement of a birth that seems certain to draw unparalleled media coverage, even in the annals of Britain’s headline-making royal family. | A brief message on Twitter was the first of a series of carefully scripted disclosures set to culminate in the announcement of a birth that seems certain to draw unparalleled media coverage, even in the annals of Britain’s headline-making royal family. |
| “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. | |
| It said the duchess traveled by car to the hospital from another royal residence, Kensington Palace. Reporters outside the building said the couple slipped into the facility largely unobserved by the waiting press corps. | |
| There has been no official word on whether the duke and duchess are expecting a boy or a girl and information about the birth is expected be closely restricted. | |
| The formal announcement that a baby has been born will be made in a statement driven by car from the hospital across London and posted on an easel in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. | |
| The parents met in the early 2000s when both were students at St. Andrew’s University 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, Princess Diana, has hovered over Kate and William and the duke has frequently made clear that he wants to protect his wife from the intense media scrutiny associated with his mother. | |
| 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. | |
| The run-up to the birth, however, has been marked by a remarkable display of restraint among Britain’s usually aggressive tabloids with no sign of photographs being published after clandestine stakeouts of the royal couple. | |
| Intrusive and highly competitive coverage of royal events was usual 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 press operates. | |
| The baby is expected to be known formally as the prince or princess of Cambridge, and, because of recent changes in the law of royal succession, will be the third in line to the throne, after Prince Charles, 64, and William, 31. Prince Harry, the younger son of Charles and Diana, will be fourth. | |
| The expected 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 success in cricket, rugby and cycling. 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. | |
John F. Burns and Sarah Lyall contributed reporting. |