OK! Australia × July 01, 2006
Gwen’s New Baby
Gwen and Gavin go ga-ga as they welcome their son, Kingston, into the world.
He’s only a month old but already Kingston James McGregor Rossdale is one of the coolest babies in the world. He’s got a superstar singer and fashion icon for a mum in Gwen Stefani, and a rock star dad in Gavin Rossdale. Then there’s his cool name. While he shares one of his middle name, McGregor, with his dad, who’s half-Scottish, his first name, Kingston, is the capital of Jamaica - look closely at these photos and you’ll even see him wearing a t-shirt with Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley on it!
To top it all off, with an American mum and a British dad (Gwen 36, hails from Anaheim, California and Gavin, 38, was born in Kilburn, north-west London), little Kingston has got that whole glamorous, double-continent thing going on, which is so hip right now. Only got one passport? Pah! Everybody knows that the cool kids carry two passports in their Louis Vuitton leather travel document cases these days. And, like most celebrity kids, his parents snapped up Kingston’s internet domain name before they announced his birth to the world, to prevent anyone else from registering it. So, it looks like he’s a thoroughly modern boy!
He wasn’t in much of a hurry to come out though - in fact, he arrived fashionably late (a week late, to be precise). He weighed 3.4kg when he was finally born after Gwen underwent a Cesarean section at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA. Soon after the delivery, a proud and delighted Gavin walked out of the operating room and told their waiting family members the good news, which was greeted by a round of applause.
While Gavin discovered in 2004 that he has a teenage daughter, Daisy Lowe, from a previous relationship, this is the first experience of caring for a baby. But he and Gwen couldn’t be more delighted about having their much-longed-for son at home with them. And they are clearly devoted to him, as these photos show.
As he sat quietly and calmly in his parent’s arms, with only an occasional cry, Gavin said that he’d noticed Kingston’s personality was really chilled out. And Gwen looked radiant and as glamorous as ever, although the former No Doubt singer, who had one of the most famously flat stomachs in showbiz, is already keen to get back into shape. After giving birth, Gwen revealed that she couldn’t wait to get back to working out, saying, ‘I’m looking to my [post-pregnancy] diet and I am going to train.’ Gavin even joked, just a couple of weeks after the birth, that Gwen was ‘out jogging right now!’
Getting back into superstar shape might have to be put on the back-burner in the immediate future, however, as Gwen is currently untangling herself from a legal mess. The singer designs handbags for a firm called Schifter & Partners, and rival designer LeSportsac claims Gwen’s Harajuku Lovers collection is a copy of it’s own Japanese street look, and is suing Gwen’s business partner. In the lawsuit, Gwen was granted maternity reprieve, but she could soon be on her way back to court, just weeks after giving birth. Hardly the kind of extra stress a new mother needs!
In the meantime, however, Gwen and Gavin are enjoying life in the beautiful home they’ve prepared for being a family, which includes a very patriotic nursery! Rather than getting a designer in, it’s clear who’s had the most influence on Kingston’s room - a bib on his high chair bears the St George’s Cross, the English national flag, and a message saying, ‘Come on England’, obviously put there by his soccer-mad dad! But his father is not the only one with his stamp on the nursery. The collection of soft toy lambs in the cot is clearly a nod to both Grammy-winning Gwen’s L.A.M.B, clothing line and her hit album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. - four things that obviously mean the world to her!
Babies have been uppermost in Gwen’s mind since she was a young girl and she has been outspoken about her desire to be a mother for some time. In fact, she’s often made reference to wanting a baby in songs such as ‘What You Waiting For?’ (which features a ticking biological clock) and, more explicitly in No Doubt’s ‘A Simple Kind of Life’, in which she wished for a ‘mistake’ with her birth control. ‘I always thought I’d be a mom/… You seem like you’d be a good dad.’ She was even more upfront in an MTV interview when she said, ‘Babies are totally on my mind. When I got my first period I was thinking, gosh, I want to have a baby. How many years ago was that!’ And now of course, her dreams have come true.
‘She’s a top girl,’ said a proud Gavin who met Gwen in 1995, when No Doubt opened for his band Bush. ‘We were made for each other,’ he added. Since marrying in 2002, the couple have notched up plenty of frequent flyer points, criss-crossing the globe between homes in LA and London. They split their time between their houses in Los Feliz, California and the trendy Primrose Hill area of north London. Gwen bought the Los Feliz house long before she met Gavin. ‘I love this place so much,’ she once said. ‘I moved out of my parents’ house and into this.’ Although there have been many renovations to make room for the expanding family, Gwen admits the house may still be too small for the three of them. ‘We’re probably going to have to move,’ she explained. ‘My husband wants to write songs, and there’s no more room. He can’t have a studio next to the baby’s room!’
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