Inside the Sky News 'Royal Baby Watch'

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With the impending arrival of the latest addition to the Royal Family, Sky News' 'Royal Baby Watch' is getting into gear.

Sarah Whitehead shared the steps a 24-hour live-broadcasting powerhouse like Sky News takes to cover big home affairs stories from her perspective as head of home news and deputy head of newsgathering.

"Many think that because the baby is the second royal baby it’s not interesting and nobody cares," she said.

"However I expect when we hear Kate is in labour and we hear she has gone into hospital the spike in traffic to our website to find out what’s going on will be extraordinary."

This traffic will transfer to social media, she said, as everyone looks to find out other details like baby's name and gender.

"What’s amazing about these kinds of stories is that it’s a story where everyone needs an update all the time. It’s like your dream story for a 24-hour news channel or a digital outlet or even social media, simply because people want to know more so they keep coming back, building traffic.

"Therefore it’s down to us to get the coverage right, so that people can come down to us and get the news from various platforms."

Royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills is staying in Paddington to make sure she is close to the story, and satellite trucks, wifi networks are set up in demarcated pens outside the St Mary's Hospital Lindo Wing to "be there as soon as the event happens".

"Before for George we ran what I call ‘door cam’ for hours and we got the most unbelievable amount of people watching us, by us just pointing a camera at the door. People were just waiting to see if they come out of the hospital or not. I believe it will be the same this time."

The Royal Baby is not just of interest to the British public though.

"This is also a massive international story," said Whitehead. "The international media have been more interested than the British media; the Americans are on the top of the pile with loads of American channels down at the Lindo Wing like CBS, ABC and Fox."

When the news does break, however, Sky News anchor Kay Burley and other presenters will join Mills outside the hospital to interview a number of guests, from when Kate goes into labour up until the family return to Kensington Palace.

"I expect after about two days the hype will completely evaporate. But the numbers during that time will be massive and it’s really important in a news channel like Sky News we hit those moments."

On the other hand, immense preparation is simply not enough Whitehead said.

"I kind of hoped that we could last through this week without sending resources down to the Lindo Wing because we are so stretched with the election, because we have teams out with all the different parties."

Deciding how to allocate resources is a big part of Whitehead's job and in the current climate, with so many important ongoing stories, the process can be difficult.

"It’s a massively tricky time when you have a huge, long-running story like the election campaign," she said, "with six weeks of a large number of people out on the road, added with other stories people watch and now the royal baby watch.

"So it can be time-consuming and resource-consuming too, but it brings loads of traffic to our channel and platforms, which is brilliant.”