PHOTO Ice T and Coco welcome baby daughter Chanel Nicole

Ice T and wife Nicole “Coco” Austin really have something to be thankful for this weekend — a baby daughter! Coco gave birth to Chanel Nicole two weeks early on Saturday and the parents were quick to make the joyful announcement on social media along with the first photo of Chanel.

“Surprise!!! Look who came early!!” wrote Coco on Instagram, along with photo of her newborn daughter above. “Welcome the new arrival of Chanel Nicole.. A beautiful healthy 5.7 pound and 18 inch baby girl. Ice and I are so proud! I cried while she was coming out I was so excited to meet her!”

Ice T tweeted the photo and wrote, “Ladies and Gentlemen! Please allow me to introduce to the World…. Baby Chanel 5.7 pounds. Love is Love.”

Coco tipped off her Twitter followers that Chanel might be arriving early by tweeting this next baby bump photo and writing, “My 37 week bump!!..This baby is coming early? – a mothers intuition? #ChanelNicole is trying to make her appearance:”

As far as little Chanel’s designer moniker, Chanel explained the inspiration to People earlier this week. “Ice wanted to name her ‘Little Coco’ because that’s what he did for his son ‘Little Ice’ and I was like, ‘No. I don’t want to do that because I want her to have her own identity,’” Coco said. “I don’t want people to look at her and go, ‘Okay, you have to be like your mom because the names are the same.’ I just don’t believe in that.”

Coco says Ice T was understanding of her concerns and he then suggested Coco. “Like Coco Chanel so it’s not Coco, but it’s close to Coco,” he explained. Coco liked the idea, and they used Coco’s real name for Chanel’s middle name Nicole. “So really it’s from the origin of my real name, but it’s not blatantly in your face,” Coco says.

Coco also talked with People about the hub-bub her seemingly undersized baby bump caused online after her pregnancy announcement back in July:

“They were putting me under a microscope and then the comments started flowing,” she shares. ” ‘How is it possible she doesn’t have a bump at six months? How doesn’t she have a bump at seven months?’ It was like I was constantly defending my bump because here I was second-guessing it too.”

“I ran to my doctor … asking her, ‘Is this a problem?’ And she was like, ‘No. If you’re an athlete and if you have strong abs — and if you’ve been an athlete especially your whole life — it takes longer for your abs to expand,’ ” Austin explains. “I didn’t know this.”

“So, I was like, ‘Oh, that makes sense if you already have loose stomach muscles, it’s going to pop out faster as opposed to strong stomach muscles,’ ” Austin, who adds she comes “from a background of fitness competitions [and has] been in fitness [her] whole life,” says. “It’s just taking longer for my bump to expand.”

 

Coco later explained that the baby bump controversy pretty much vanished overnight. “I was offended for a while because I felt like I had something to prove, but now I don’t have anything to prove because literally the night eight months came, I went to sleep and I woke up with a bump. That’s how fast it happened. It didn’t happen over a certain period of time. It literally happened over night and I couldn’t believe it.”

Here is a photo of Coco’s instabump at 36 weeks:

Congratulations to Coco and Ice T! Be sure to keep up with Coco’s motherhood journey (as well as her shoes) on TheCocoBlog.com.