The Countess of Wessex is expecting a baby in December, despite a history of difficult and potentially life-threatening pregnancies.

Buckingham Palace said yesterday that the Earl and Countess of Wessex were “over the moon” at confirmation of the pregnancy. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were reported to be delighted by the prospect of their eighth grandchild. The baby will be seventh or ninth in line to the throne, depending on gender.

At the age of 42, the Queen’s daughter-in-law would have faced an increased risk of a difficult birth even without her history. A team of doctors led by Marcus Setchwell, the royal gynaecologist, will be keeping a particularly close eye on her.

The number of women giving birth over the age of 40 has more than doubled in the past 20 years. Madonna gave birth at the same age and Cherie Blair was already 45 when she produced Leo.Many late pregnancies are the result of IVF treatment. Buckingham Palace would not say yesterday whether the Countess had undergone any treatment to help her to conceive, although she has said in the past that she would be willing to consider it if necessary.

In 2002, two and a half years after the couple married at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the Countess lost her first child when she suffered an ectopic pregnancy and had to undergo surgery to have the foetus removed from a Fallopian tube.

She became pregnant again the next year but, in her 36th week, she was admitted to Frimley Park Hospital, near the couple’s home in Bagshot, Surrey, after complaining of severe internal pains. Doctors found her dangerously ill from blood loss and performed an emergency Caesarian operation to deliver the first royal child born on the National Health Service.

The premature baby weighed only 4lb 9oz, and spent two weeks in intensive care in a specialist neonatal unit at St George’s Hospital, Tooting, South London. There was a subsequent investigation into why it took an ambulance more than 30 minutes to respond to the Countess’s urgent telephone call for help. The baby was christened Louise Alice Elizabeth Mary Mountbatten-Windsor, the Louise being taken from Queen Victoria’s artistic daughter, Princess Louise.

At the time of their marriage the Earl and Countess gave up, with the Queen’s approval, their future children’s right to the title Royal Highness which would normally be conferred on the grandchildren of a reigning sovereign.

If the Countess’s child is a boy, he will take the title Viscount Severn; if a girl, she will be known as Lady (First name) Mountbatten-Windsor.

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