Ronan Keating (right) with wife Storm and newborn baby Coco
For Ronan Keating, welcoming his new daughter, Coco, was an experience both “strange” and “lovely.”
His wife, Storm, recently gave birth to Coco amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The United Kingdom is on lockdown and there are restrictions in place for hospitals, particularly when it comes to allowing visitors for expectant mothers. Even his other kids weren’t let in.
“It was obviously very strange, because nobody could come into the hospital. It was just Storm and myself and little Coco in lockdown in the hospital,” Ronan, front man of the boy band Boyzone, related in his radio show “Magic Breakfast.”
“The nurses were amazing and the staff [members] were brilliant. But it was just so different—it was so quiet, which was nice in a way. We had all of that time just to ourselves,” he pointed out.
Ronan has a 2-year-old son, Cooper, with Storm. He also has two elder children with his ex-wife Yvonne Connolly: Jack, 21, and Missy, 19. “Cooper couldn’t come in. His other brothers and sisters couldn’t come … So it was strange. It was very different and lovely,” he said.
Storm and Coco are doing well, added Ronan, who’s feeling giddy about being a daddy to a newborn baby once again.
“Storm is flying and doing wonderful. Feeling great, enjoying this whole process once again. It’s lovely,” he said. “Coco’s just a gorgeous little thing. She wakes [up] every three hours, just like clockwork. She’s pooing, peeing … She needs three-hour feeds. You just forget what that feels like, to wake up in the middle of the night.”
We’re indeed living in “obviously strange times,” but it’s not something to dwell in. “We don’t need to go on about it. We’re all in the same boat,” the 43-year-old recording artist pointed out. “It’s working for us right now because we’re enjoying just being in the house, spending all this time together.”
Meanwhile, the name “Coco” was something Ronan and his family had already picked two years ago. “We actually had that name before we knew we were having a boy (Cooper) the first time around,” he said. “We had that name before we knew it was going to be a girl.”