Former model Noelle Reno spoke exclusively to HELLO! in September 2016 when she revealed she was expecting her first child, a boy, with partner Nick Perks. "I'm so grateful for where everything is at, I truly am," Noelle told HELLO! "It's almost scary to a degree. There are lots of challenges but it looks like everything has panned out how I wanted. I just feel so blessed."
Noelle found out she was expecting just as she was preparing to move back to America to work on a project – and although the timing wasn’t ideal, she and her London based partner, City trader Nick Perks, couldn’t be happier. She and Nick had only been dating for four months when they learnt that they were to become first-time parents – just a week before he was due to leave for Nepal to fulfil a lifelong ambition to climb Mount Everest and a few days before she was relocating from London to California to set up her company. "The lease was about to start on this place, my mom had just arrived in LA from Arizona to work with me and my team was in place. Then I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm pregnant."
READ: Noelle Reno opens up about the birth of her son Maximilian Xander
Fortunately, the relationship had progressed to the point where she and Nick were talking about having children – although not quite this soon – and he was delighted. "He is an Aries who thinks quickly on his feet," she laughs. Determined to make things work, the couple spent time jetting between the UK and US, with Noelle’s business growing in tandem with her expanding tummy. "He [the baby] kicks like the son of a City trader and mountain man," she jokes. Her accountant mum Carol has been on hand to help with the new company and baby preparations. "It's been a gift having her here," says Noelle, who plans to give birth in a hospital in Santa Monica with Nick by her side. "America is really baby-centric and just being born in Santa Monica is bound to be enough to give our baby a sense of entitlement," she smiles.
As Noelle pads barefoot around her airy home, it's clear she has entered an exciting new phase – and largely come to terms with the loss of her troubled ex-fiancé Scot Young, who fell to his death from the balcony of their London penthouse in December 2014. The pair were separated but still living together and the bankrupt ex-property tycoon had been suffering paranoid delusions, triggered by bipolar disorder. He was also embroiled in a battle with his ex-wife over his alleged missing fortune.
Noelle first met Nick through mutual friends in at a party in Ibiza. He was keen but she wasn't so sure and it took some persuasion before she agreed to go out with him. Ironically, the anniversary of that first date falls within days of when their son is due – on 11 November. "My single girlfriends are like, 'Oh my God! You got the guy, you got the baby, you got the company – it's all happened in a year!' It's like, 'Wow,' but there was a lot of legwork; it didn't just happen in a year – although I'll say that when I met Nick, I was definitely in the best place I’d ever been."