Actress Ada Nicodemou, and her husband Chrys Xipolitas, welcomed their first child on August 22, and have named their son Johnas Chrys. Johnas Xipolitas weighed 3.5 kg (7 lb 7 oz). Ada and Chrys have spoken openly about using IVF, and felt very fortunate to conceive on their first round.

Ada is originally from Cyprus, and moved to Australia as a child. She has appeared on television since she was a teenager, in the multicultural school drama, Heartbreak High, where she played aspiring dancer Katerina Ioannou. Since 2000, she has played Leah Patterson-Baker, making her one of the soap’s longest-serving cast members. Her character Leah is a big-hearted, hard-working single mother who runs a cafe and is very unlucky in love, with one of her husbands ending up in witness protection and the other killed in a freak abseiling accident. As her cafe was destroyed in a fire during a race riot, sending her into a spiral of depression, she can’t be said to be lucky in business either. This year Ada became the host of reality TV dating show, Please Marry My Boy, where contestants must move in with their potential husband’s mother, and mum makes the final choice. She has appeared in two films, including The Matrix, where she played Dujour, the “White Rabbit” girl.

Chrys is a chef with more than twenty years experience, and runs a Mediterranean restaurant in Sydney called Island. Ada and Chrys were married in 2007.

(Full story in this week’s New Idea)