McCartney's wife Heather Mills gives birth to girl

LONDON (AP) _ Paul McCartney's wife Heather Mills has given birth to a girl, the couple said Thursday. <br><br>Beatrice, the couple's first child, was born Tuesday at a London hospital and weighed

Thursday, October 30th 2003, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

LONDON (AP) _ Paul McCartney's wife Heather Mills has given birth to a girl, the couple said Thursday.

Beatrice, the couple's first child, was born Tuesday at a London hospital and weighed 7 pounds, her parents said in a statement.

``She is a little beauty. We couldn't be prouder,'' the 61-year-old former Beatle McCartney and Mills, 35, said, adding that they were ``ecstatic.''

A spokeswoman for the Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth said Beatrice Milly McCartney was born three weeks premature and delivered by Caesarean section.

Spokeswoman Claire Hornick said the baby and mother were doing ``very well,'' and added that Mills and McCartney were still in the hospital Thursday.

The Daily Mirror newspaper had reported earlier Thursday that the child was a boy.

The baby is Mills' first child. McCartney has three adult children Stella, Mary and James, and a stepdaughter, Heather, from his marriage to first wife Linda McCartney, who died in 1998 from breast cancer.

The baby was named after Mills' late mother Beatrice and McCartney's aunt Milly, Hornick said.

Mills, a former model who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident and raises money for children disabled in war, married McCartney at an Irish castle in June 2002.

Earlier this year, she expressed fears she would never have a child because of a series of health problems.

``The chances of me getting pregnant are about that much,'' she said in a television interview, holding up her thumb and finger an inch apart.

But the couple announced in May that Mills was pregnant.