Beyonce, Jay-Z welcome baby girl

Music royalty Beyonce and Jay-Z are the proud parents of a baby girl named Blue Ivy, media reports said, breaking the news of one of the biggest celebrity births in years.

Pop diva Beyonce, 30, gave birth by caesarian section on Saturday night in a private wing of the Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan with rapper Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, by her side, E! Online reported.

Initial reports had the baby’s name as Ivy Blue, but those close to the couple confirmed later it was the other way around. The Houston Chronicle, Beyonce’s hometown paper, was alone in spelling it Blu Ivy, without the “e”.

The Twitterverse was abuzz as celebrities and fans alike delighted in news of the star couple’s first child.

“Welcome to the world Blue! We love you already,” Hollywood A-lister and close friend Gwyneth Paltrow wrote, before clearing up the name issue in a second tweet: “It’s Blue Ivy Carter!”

“The most beautiful girl in the world,” Beyonce’s sister Solange Knowles tweeted, before adding, in another probable reference to the name mix-up: “Information that goes through the telephone, always gets delivered wrong.”

Fellow pop diva Rihanna also weighed in on the momentous showbiz arrival, tweeting: “Welcome to the world princess Carter! Love Aunty Rih.”

Beyonce checked into the hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side late Friday under the name “Ingrid Jackson,” renting out its entire fourth floor for $1.3 million, the New York Daily News reported. People were seen bringing bags of food and wine into the hospital on Saturday night, apparently for celebrations, as security guards patrolled the perimeter.

But not everybody was happy by the tight security arrangements.

“They just used the hospital like it was their own and nobody else mattered,” new dad Neil Coulon told the New York Post.

AFP