Baby makes three! Jenna Compono and Zach Nichols, who welcomed their first child together on Friday, September 3, opened up about meeting their son for the first time.
“Well, Zach got to see him before me while he held my leg and watched him come out,” Compono, 28, exclusively told Us Weekly about the birth. “But when he was put on my chest and we both got to see him, it was amazing. WE made this adorable little life. It’s truly the best feeling ever. We haven’t put him down once yet; we are completely obsessed.”
While pregnancy and childbirth are no easy feat, Nichols, 33, marveled at his wife’s journey.
“There is nothing that Jenna has done thus far in motherhood that hasn’t impressed me,” Nichols told Us. “She made pregnancy look easy; she barely skipped a beat. Watching her go into labor, and then deliver our son was the most impressive things I’ll ever witness, and the happiest moment of my life. But if you were to ask me in August 2014 if I thought that hot blonde I met in Panama with the delicious bum would one day be the one to make me a dad, I would’ve laughed in your face. But, here we are with this amazing life and beautiful baby boy, and maybe that’s the most impressive part of.”
The Real World alum, who was scheduled to be induced one day prior, naturally went into labor instead.
“The funny thing is, I was walking around 5 [centimeters] dilated without contractions, we chose a day to get induced because he was already late,” Compono recalled. “We chose Thursday at 4 p.m. About 5 a.m., I started getting really bad contractions that I brushed off as just nervous cramps … soon to find out they were contractions and we went to the hospital. From there I did get an epidural and we were set up in our room.”
She continued, “Honestly we could have been done a whole lot earlier, but I wasn’t mentally ready, so every time they wanted to break my water, I would say no. But it finally broke and then we started practice pushes we practiced for about 45 [minutes] because my contractions slowed down and I couldn’t feel them because of the epidural. Once I got the hang of it, he was out in four pushes. It was unreal!”
The pair, who named their first child Anthony, also noted their struggles to pick a name at first.
“We hard time choosing a name to come up with,” she said. “Our interests in names were completely opposite. We wanted to go more traditional for our son so we chose Anthony, which is both of our fathers’ middle names.”
She added, “We are looking forward to bringing Anthony home and just having fun being parents. Zach is super hands-on and I can honestly say I haven’t changed one diaper yet. He continues to impress me every day and you can easily see that being a dad came so natural for him. We are super excited to have Anthony and we apologize now that Instagram will be flooded!”
The Nassau Community College alum also noted the proud parents’ hopes and dreams for their little one.
“We just want him to live life to its fullest and be a good person,” Compono explained. “Whatever his dreams are in life, we 100 percent will support. We brought this little angel into the world, and we will do everything we can to give him the best life we possibly can.”
The MTV stars first announced that they were expanding their family in February. “Happy Valentine’s Day! I gave Jenna some lovin’, and she’s giving me a family,” the Michigan native posted via Instagram at the time, alongside ultrasound photos. “I have never been this excited. August couldn’t come soon enough … because that is when Jenna will officially be a milf.”
The couple first met while filming The Challenge: Battle of the Exes 2 before they started dating. While they briefly split in 2016, the duo later reconciled in May 2018, one year before getting engaged. Nichols, who popped the question in December 2019, married the then-pregnant reality star in March during an intimate ceremony in Michigan.
Scroll below to check out exclusive photos of the couple’s bundle of joy: