ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, April 17, 1996              TAG: 9604170062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-5  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press

MADONNA (THE SINGER) WITH CHILD

Imagine life as Madonna's wee one. Cone-shaped baby bottles? Baby togs by Jean-Paul Gaultier? X-rated first words?

We'll see, since the Material Girl has gone Maternal. Madonna is expecting her first child in November.

``She is pregnant,'' her publicist Liz Rosenberg said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Budapest, Hungary, where Madonna, 37, is filming the movie version of the musical ``Evita.''

The father is Carlos Leon, Madonna's 29-year-old personal trainer-boyfriend.

The world was informed of Madonna's ticking biological clock when she joked last year that she desperately wanted to have a baby and might even take out an ad to find just the right daddy.

Turns out she didn't have to look past her own home gym.

Leon, who helped sculpt the Material Girl's well-toned body, has been doing double duty as Madonna's lover the past year, according to the London tabloid The Sun. The Sun cited an unidentified source close to the singer as saying, ``She has no plans to marry Carlos but he is totally supportive.''

``They are both ecstatic about this,'' Rosenberg said.

So will the ``Like a Virgin'' singer try natural childbirth? ``She hasn't really mentioned that,'' Rosenberg said.

LENGTH: Short :   36 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP file/1995. Carlos Leon\Personal trainer, father.