Hot News: Kate 'on a drip' with morning sickness

PRINCE William and Catherine are to have another baby in a surprise announcement the heir to the throne first hinted at during his tour to Australia and New Zealand earlier this year.

In a short statement by Kensington Palace last night, royal aids confirmed the couple are expecting a second child to baby Prince George, who turned one-year-old two months ago.

The announcement is believed to have come after 32-year-old Kate was again struck down by the debilitating hyperemesis gravidarum, an acute form of morning sickness.

It is understood she may not yet be 12 weeks pregnant but she was to miss a crucial public engagement in Oxford yesterday and possibly others during the week and the palace wanted to rush the announcement rather than fuel rumours.

But the duchess is being treated at the palace rather than having to be hospitalised as she was in December 2012.

Then, the duchess was also not quite at 12 weeks when the palace was forced to reveal she was pregnant with baby George, after she had to be hospitalised with the illness.

Yesterday, the palace said the couple was however 'delighted' with the news, as was the Queen and other members of the royal family including grandfather Prince Charles.

'Many congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. I'm delighted by the happy news that they're expecting another baby,' British Prime Minister David Cameron said, in one of the first official congrats messages posted moments after the public revelation of a another heir was announced about 10.30am local time.

A Kensington Palace spokesman said the Duchess's attendance at future events would be decided on a 'case by case' basis.

As well as the trip to Oxford University, she was scheduled to be among the guests at the opening ceremony of the Invictus Games in London for wounded soldiers from across the Commonwealth on Wednesday evening along with William, Prince Harry and the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.

The following day she was due to attend a solemn Drumhead service at Lee Valley Athletics Centre with the Duke and Harry, and later with William to watch Invictus competitors taking part in matches and heats.

The Duchess is also due to make her first official solo overseas tour, to Malta, for two days in two weeks' time, from September 20-21.

A spokesman said: 'We will be planning this on a case-by-case basis - it's too early to talk about Malta and Invictus.'

The couple's second child will become fourth in line to the throne, shifting Prince Harry further down the line of succession to fifth with the Duke of York moving to sixth and princesses Beatrice and Eugenie seventh and eight.

The future bub is already being dubbed by the British press as 'spare to the heir'.

Rumours that a second royal baby might not be too far off first surfaced during the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's overseas tour to New Zealand and Australia.

When William was presented with a lace shawl for Prince George in Wellington in April, he told its creator Cynthia Read 'You might have to make another one soon', prompting the suggestion that a little brother or sister for George was on the cards.

But the rumour was quashed after Catherine sampled glasses of wine at a vineyard and then took a high-speed jet boat ride in which the operator asked whether anyone was pregnant, for safety reasons, and no royal hands were raised. But it was perhaps clear the couple were already trying.

A sibling for George, born on July 22 last year, always appeared to be a question of when rather than if.

But second-born royal have on occasion ended up as monarch.

The country's last king, George VI, was not meant to accede to the throne and only did so when his older brother Edward VIII abdicated over his love for American divorcee Wallis Simpson in 1936.

George VI's father, George V, was also not destined to wear the crown.

But he outlived his older brother the Duke of Clarence and Avondale - Prince Albert Victor - who died from flu in 1892. George V became king in 1910.

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