Mothers’ delight that newborns share birthday with royal baby

At University Hospital Coventry there were 13 births yesterday – unusually, most of them boys, which was a fact not lost on head of midwifery Carmel McCalmont, given that the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a son.

Mrs McCalmont said: “There was a lot of excitement on the ward all day, among both the parents and the staff because they knew Kate was in labour.

“Although, during their labour the women weren’t interested at all (in the news), they were all interested this morning that their babies share a birthday.

“The majority were boys with just a few girls, which was interesting given that Kate had a boy.”

Mrs McCalmont said Kate’s labour appeared to have been entirely “normal”.

She said: “The Duchess of Cambridge is a young woman, she has a good physique and is obviously fit, so we would expect that she should labour nicely and have a good birth and as far as we know she has. She had a typical, normal, straight-forward first-time labour and the fact that she is going home today would indicate she had a normal labour, which is great.”

Born at the hospital just 17 minutes after the royal arrival was little baby Yusuf, weighing in at a healthy 6lb 7oz following a natural birth on the hospital’s maternity wing.

Proud new mother Raheela Ali said friends had joked her son might end up sharing a royal birthday but that fact was a long way from her thoughts as she neared the end of her three-and-a-half-hour labour.

“I was having a joke about it with my friends, because I was due 
last Friday and they were teasing me about it,” the 31-year-old 
said.

“Then, after we knew Kate had gone into labour, my friends were saying ‘you had better get a move on’.

“Then I went into labour at 1pm, so that’s how it turned out.”

Mrs Ali, of Coventry, carried on through the pain without gas and air because it was making her dizzy but had to tell her husband to “stop talking, and keep fanning me” while she concentrated 
on the safe delivery of their first-born.

She said she would be applying for one of the 2,013 silver pennies commissioned by the Royal Mint to commemorate the birth of the royal baby. “I was joking to my friends that I really want that coin, then maybe I could put it on eBay in a few years,” she said. “But no, it is something to remember this all by.”