Breaking Britain's time-honoured convention of informing a monarch of any royal birth with an official notice, Prince William will himself call his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II when his baby is born.
"The duke intends to tell the Queen himself," a palace source told 'The Sunday Times'.
After his wife Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, delivers the Queen's newest great-grandchild, the royal couple's private secretary will inform Prime Minister David Cameron and a handful of others, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Officials in Buckingham Palace will notify the head of each of the 54 Commonwealth countries and the First Ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
For the public, an official notice announcing the birth will be placed at the gates of the palace.
Meanwhile, the Queen has put a high-speed helicopter on standby to take Prince William to Kate's bedside whenever she goes into labour. The 175mph Sikorsky S-76c chopper will rush Willam from his RAF base in Anglesey to London to be with Kate when she has the baby due to be born by next weekend.
This means the 31-year-old prince can carry on with his work as a rescue pilot until the last moment without having to worry about missing out on the birth.
William plans to be with his wife when she has their child in the private Lindo wing of St.Mary's Hospital in Paddington, west London, where his mother, Princess Diana, gave birth to him in June 1982.
