UPDATE: Less than a week after Jeannie Mai Jenkins shared the name of her and Jeezy's baby, Monaco, the talk-show host is revealing the sex of the child.
Making the big announcement on the Jan. 26 episode of The Real, Jeannie said, "I am very excited to share that Monaco Mai Jenkins is a girl." And the TV star couldn't be more excited about starting this next chapter as the mom to a daughter.
"That's the part that I'm still just so overwhelmed with, you know?" Jeannie said in a preview for the episode. "I can't explain to you how many visions jumped into my head this moment I put that little girl into my hands. I thought about my relationship with Mama Mai. That already, I can't wait to have that bond with Monaco. I also thought about all the things that I didn't learn as a little girl that I can't wait to teach my daughter now, you know?"
"There's just so many reasons why raising a little girl is such an honor to me," she continued. "And I would have been happy with anything, but to have Monaco, I can't tell you, I feel chosen. It's emotional. I can't wait to raise a really strong, loving, empathetic, humorous, fashionable, fly little girl."
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Drumroll, please!
Jeannie Mai Jenkins has revealed the name of her and Jeezy's first child together and it's…Monaco Mai Jenkins!
So how did the parents choose the moniker? As Jeannie explained, it didn't come to them right away.
"I thought Baby J's name should be a J name—because obviously Jeannie and Jeezy, like, makes sense—but that wasn't the name that came to us," the Real host said in a video filmed before the baby's birth but was shared to her YouTube channel on Jan. 20. "What really came to us was how Baby J came to fruition for us when we were dating."
Jeannie then looked back at a trip to Monaco that the now-married couple took when they were dating. She honed in on a photo of a bridge from the trip that's now displayed in the nursery. It was there, the TV star explained, that everything changed.
"Literally where this car is right there," she said pointing at the picture, "he turned me around and he said, ‘What kind of life do you want with me? What do you want to do in this life? What dreams do you have? What is doing life for us?'"
"At the time, I didn't know what it meant," Jeannie said on YouTube. "I didn't know technically it meant marriage and having kids. I just know that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. I wanted to build with him. I wanted to grow with him, and I wanted us to bear fruit together. And I saw that it meant so much more than just kids. It meant, like, family, and visions, and hopes, and memories and it all happened here."
And Monaco isn't just the baby's name. "That's really the theme of the nursery is what Monaco is about," Jeannie added. "Family, moments, traveling, discussions, important, key points in my life and Jeezy's life that brought Monaco here."
As a result, Jeannie decorated the nursery with everything from family hand-me-downs and photos of their loved ones to a floor globe and a handmade cloud display to remind her firstborn that "the sky's the limit." And because Monaco is also "a place that represents, like, glam and luxury and cars," she said, the newborn also has a toy Bentley.
Jeezy, who was already a father of two, and Jeannie announced Monaco's birth on Jan. 11. At the time, they referred to the little one only as "Baby Jenkins."
"I asked God for a life of love and happiness," Jeannie wrote on Instagram. "He sent me my family."
The name was also shared on the Jan. 20 episode of The Real, and Jeannie's co-hosts said the sex of the child would be revealed at a later time on the show. As Jeannie explained to WWD in September, she and her recording artist hubby decided to wait to find out the sex of the baby until after the birth.
"That makes things more exciting rather than defining the baby with pink skirts or blue corduroy shorts," she told the outlet. "I'm getting everything because I want the baby to have options. It's very awakening to see how much you put your baby into very specific stereotypes, based on whether or not you know it's a boy or a girl."
And her colleagues can't wait to meet the little one. "Congratulations, Jeannie! Congratulations, Jeezy and your beautiful family," Adrienne Houghton said. "We can't wait to meet you, Monaco!"
(This story was originally published Jan. 20, 2022 at 9:50 a.m. PST.)