The Palins welcome a baby!
Bristol Palin, the daughter of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and her fiance, Levi Johnston, have given birth to a boy, named Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, according to TMZ. Bristol delivered Tripp on Sunday.
"I'm going to take him hunting and fishing," Johnston said of his son back in October. "He'll be everywhere with me."
"I'm going to take him hunting and fishing," Johnston said of his son back in October. "He'll be everywhere with me."
Bristol, 18, and Johnston, 18, are engaged and plan to wed this summer.
Johnston -- a hockey player from Wasilla, Alaska, who dropped out of high school to take a job as an apprentice electrician -- was by Bristol's side throughout the campaign and even displayed a "Bristol" tattoo on his ring finger at the GOP convention. He told the Associated Press that there had been no pressure put on him to marry Bristol and that the two teens had made plans to wed before it was known she was pregnant.
"We both love each other," Johnston said. "We both want to marry each other. And that's what we are going to do. We were planning on getting married a long time ago with or without the kid."
Johnston has been optimistic about parenthood throughout the pregnancy.
"We're up for it," he said. "I'm excited to have my first kid. It's going to be a lot of hard work, but we can handle it."
Two days before Bristol was due to give birth, Johnston's mother was arrested in an undercover drug investigation. Sherry Johnston was charged with six felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance.
As for Palin, in addition to being the first woman nominated by the Republican Party to run on a national ticket, she is now also a first-time grandmother. The new baby also comes eight months after Palin, 44, gave birth to her and husband Todd's fifth child, Trig.
On Sept. 1, just days after Senator John McCain made Palin his running mate, the Alaskan governor announced that Bristol was five months pregnant and that she intended to keep the baby and marry Johnston.
"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned, " the Palins wrote in a statement. "As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support. Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family."
Palin also asked the media to respect the young couple's privacy, as has been the tradition of children of candidates. During the campaign, however, Bristol's teenage pregnancy came up in several debates about Palin's pro-life platform.
Even Lindsay Lohan thought the coverage of the mom-to-be was distracting.
"I get Sarah Palin's views against abortion, but I would much prefer to hear more about what she can do for our country, rather than how her daughter is going to have a child no matter what," Lohan said in September.
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