• August 27, 2001
• Vol. 56
• No. 9

Fashionably Late

A Week After Her Due Date, Plus-Size Stunner Emme Welcomes Her First Child

On Aug. 9, after 16 hours of intense labor, plus-size supermodel Emme uttered the five little words so familiar to many a teeth-gritting, fist-clenching mom-to-be: "Give me the epidural now." Some 12 hours later—much of which Emme spent inhaling from a lavender aromatherapy sachet—8-lb. 1-oz. Toby Cole Aronson made her debut. "It was like a jolt of electricity went through the room," says Emme, 38, who became a first-time parent along with her manager and husband of 11 years, Phillip Aronson, 38. "It was a lightning effect."

Even if the delivery was anything but lightning quick. During the labor, which was induced at Manhattan's New York-Presbyterian hospital nearly a week after the baby's due date, "the one thing that kept me going was the baby's heartbeat [on the monitor]," says Emme. "I thought about how she was fighting to come out."

The new parents, who did not know in advance if they were having a boy or a girl, had already decided to name the baby Toby after Aronson's grandfather, who died in April. Now back in the family's New Jersey home, Emme—who hosts E!'s Fashion Emergency and markets her own clothing line for full-figured women—has not decided how much time she'll take off from work. But her sister, model-actress Melanie Entwistle, 29, has already volunteered her services as a temporary live-in nanny. "It's three girls," says Aronson, "and me."