How Beyonce will BLING up her babies!
A £300k nursery with its own planetarium — and £23,000 cradles. As she gives birth to twins, no wonder even La-La Land is agog with . . .
CAN you feel a buzz in the air this morning? That’s the ‘ Beyhive’, the millions of adoring fans of the R’n’ B superstar Beyonce, pulsating with excitement over a showbusiness event of seismic importance. She has given birth to twins.
The double birth, which reportedly took place in secret at a Los Angeles hospital last week, has provided her besotted following with the perfect chance to fawn over a performer many of them call a ‘goddess’.
And who can blame them? After all, this is the woman who once said, ‘I’m more powerful than my mind can even digest’.
The 35-year-old and her 47-year-old hip hop mogul husband, Jay-Z, aka Shawn Carter, were recently hailed by financial magazine Forbes as the world’s first billion-dollar showbusiness couple.
The pair, who last year earned $147 million (£115 million) through music, endorsement deals and other companies, already have a daughter Blue Ivy, five.
As befitting parents whom critics find unbearably narcissistic, opportunistic and publicity-obsessed, their daughter has already featured in their music videos, their endless pictures on social media and even their business development plans.
And Blue Ivy won’t be the only one wondering how things will change now she has two baby siblings hogging the limelight. So what does life have in store for the Bey-Z twins?
PRACTICE RUNS AND DECOY HOSPITALS
IT’S been quite a drama so far. The Carters were scorched by the negative publicity when Blue Ivy was born in New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital in 2012. As the couple forked out for a lavish ‘executive suite’, other patients complained their entourage was ‘heavy-handed’ and obstructed hospital visitors.
Now living in more celeb-friendly Los Angeles, they reportedly rented a $100,000-a-month mansion in Hollywood, previously owned by Madonna, because it was only a five-minute drive from Beyonce’s chosen hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre. Amid rumours that the couple were terribly stressed by the then imminent double birth, their bodyguards were taking no chances, doing practice runs to the hospital.
Neighbours then claimed the couple were dispensing with hospital completely by installing their own £ 1 million maternity ward, including incubators and an ‘entire professional neo-natal wing’, in their nine-bedroom home.
Could it have been an elaborate decoy to hide the couple’s hospital choice?
In the event, it appears Beyonce actually gave birth at a different hospital — UCLA Medical Centre. Her sister Solange, Jay-Z and Blue Ivy were spotted there last week and security outside its maternity ward was ramped up. It’s understood the twins have not yet come home from hospital.
Sources have revealed that ‘Bey and Jay are thrilled and have started sharing the news with family and closest friends’. But no official word or obligatory heavily-styled pictures yet.
WHO WAS AT THE DELIVERY?
ONE hopes it wasn’t too fraught in the delivery room. There were reports of a rift in the family because Jay-Z and sister Solange both wished to be the sole ‘birth partner’ during her labour.
Then, it was claimed that Beyonce was worried her father and former manager, Mathew Knowles, would turn up uninvited — as he did when Blue Ivy was born.
But the most controversial witness to the birth may have been Blue Ivy herself, who her mum reportedly wanted to share a ‘ magical family moment’ by watching her siblings being born. Insiders say Beyonce is convinced it will help Blue Ivy bond with her siblings. Experts have warned that, at five, the child is too young for what could be a traumatic experience.
MEETING THE NEW ARRIVALS
FOR clues as to who will be the first in line to coo over the newborns, look no further than the guest list at Beyonce’s recent baby shower (dubbed the ‘Carter Push Party’). The Africanthemed event at Beyonce’s home featured a giant tent, henna tattooing and huge balloons spelling out the word ‘Twinning’.
It was attended by Beyonce’s former bandmates in Destiny’s Child, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, tennis
champion Serena Williams, jewellery designer Lorraine Schwartz, as well as the singer’s sister Solange and their fashion designer mum Tina Knowles.
And granny won’t be far away. LAbased Tina said she ‘can’t wait’ to become a grandmother again.
She recently revealed she buys her grandchildren drum sets and noisy toys to get revenge on her musicallygifted daughters. Twin drum sets? Lucky the Carters have a big house . . .
‘NOW WE NEED A BIGGER HOUSE’
. . . Though, apparently, not big enough. The Carters never do anything by halves. of course they need a bigger home now, and have offered $120 million (£94 million) for a vast, hilltop mansion in LA’s Bel Air neighbourhood, which boasts four pools, eight bedrooms and bullet-proof glass. The 30,000 sq ft house, which was built by the same company that revamped Claridge’s hotel in London, is just down the road from Tom Jones’s home.
The couple have reportedly spent $500,000 (£390,000) on a lavish nursery. ‘Bey and Jay knocked out a wall between two bedrooms to create a master suite-size nursery,’ says a source.
‘They’ll have matching cribs and rockers and designer sheets worth $ 30,000, (£ 23,000) and a $ 50,000 (£39,000) sound system.’
Beyonce has commissioned a $20,000 (£15,000) mural on the ceiling, complete with an array of glowing stars, the insider adds. ‘It’s incredible. It’s the entire galaxy above the nursery.’ Rather more elaborate than a few stickon stars, then . . .
The room will also feature custombuilt walk-in closets, a fireplace and its own cinema. These birds may never want to fly the nest.
GROWING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS
pLAymATES could be a little bit thin on the ground. Beyonce’s friends either don’t have children or — in the case of her sister and chums such as gwyneth paltrow — have children too old to want to play with the twins.
The almost-as-famous couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Jay-Z’s former musical collaborator, would fit the bill. They also live in LA and have children with reasonably compatible ages — one-year- old Saint West and North West, four — and the same super-celebrity background.
Although the once inseparable couples fell out after the unpredictable Kanye attacked both Carters in an onstage rant, there were signs of a rapprochement when they got together in January. Could the ultimate celebrity playdate be on the cards?
QUICK, TRADEMARK THEIR NAMES!
IT’S entirely possible that Beyonce has bigger priorities on her mind than choosing twins’ names. priorities such as trademarking the name they chose for their first child, for instance.
For Beyonce, babies aren’t just pretty accessories for pictures posted on Instagram or helpful talking points in soft- soap interviews. They are marketing opportunities.
Last week, Beyonce asked the u.S. patent and Trademark office to deny a motion to delay her trademark battle over Blue Ivy Carter’s name.
Beyonce — who already has a gym clothing range called Ivy park — wants to use her daughter’s name for commercial purposes in beauty, fashion and electronics ventures. Blue Ivy Carter perfume is understood to be the first project in the pipeline.
how long before the twins follow their big sister into business?
A MUM WHO SINGS AT SCHOOL EVENTS
IT’S never too early to get your name down in the fiercely competitive world of the Los Angeles private schools system. But the most popular ones these days invariably only have places for siblings of children already there.
Consequently, it seems inevitable the twins will follow their sister to a $20,000-a-year LA primary school, the Centre for Early Education.
The progressive school was founded by psychoanalysts in 1939, receives 1,000 applications for 60 places, and has educated the children of Jack Nicholson, Jodie Foster, Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springsteen.
Beyonce and Jay-Z had previously enrolled her in a similar school in Brooklyn, New york, but were persuaded to move to California after longtime friend gwyneth paltrow assured them it was the perfect place to bring up kids.
Beyonce put on a surprise performance at the school’s annual gala concert last year — which can’t have hurt their chances of getting the twins in there when the time comes.
HAVE A LOOK AT OUR BABY PHOTOS . . .
ThE twins will have the family’s huge security entourage to shield them, but nothing will protect them from a mother who loves uploading cute family snaps on to the internet, including a recent one of her kissing her mother’s distended stomach.
There will be none of that extreme privacy malarkey for them.
Blue Ivy is rarely photographed wearing anything less than gucci and often has a miniaturised version of her mother’s haute couture outfit.
While backstage at last year’s Superbowl game, her mother snapped pictures of Coldplay star Chris martin throwing the little girl around in his arms. Needless to say, they ended up on Beyonce’s Instagram account — perfect fodder for her 103.6 million adoring followers.
The image- obsessed star owns a temperature-controlled digital storage facility that she says contains virtually every photo of her.
Rest assured, it will soon contain every carefully curated image of her twins, too — looking through this family album could take a while . . .