PARKLAND, Fla. – Jenesis Sanchez has been in hiding for nine months. Her identity was kept under wraps almost immediately after she found out she was pregnant. So why all the secrecy? The father of her baby is the late Broward County rapper XXXTentacion.
Sanchez talked to Local 10 News exclusively about their relationship, the new baby's unusual name and what she'll tell her child about the controversial SoundCloud singer.
The 20-year-old mother, who will be 21 in March, is originally from Providence, Rhode Island, but her family moved to Tampa when she was young, she said.
She calls XXXTentacion's mother, Cleopatra Bernard, Glam Mom instead of grandmom. She and the baby are living only a few blocks from Bernard's house in Parkland, in a townhouse that's owned by Glam Mom.
Bernard posted pictures of the girl's pregnant stomach on Instagram, but kept her identity a secret because of media interest surrounding who the mother was.
"I've been closed off for such a long time," Sanchez said only days after undergoing an emergency cesarean section on Jan. 26 at West Boca Medical Center.
XXXTentacion, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, found out he was going to be a father just a few weeks before he was shot and killed on June 18, 2018, in an apparent robbery as he was leaving a motor sports store in Deerfield Beach.
She said the rapper already had names picked out for his child. They were original names that he made up -- Gekyume (pronounced GEK-yoom) for a boy and Xiorra for a girl.
"Gekyume means different state or next universe of thought. And yes, Jahseh picked out this name before he passed away," Snachez said. "I know it's kind of hard to say, Gekyume. So, he goes by Yume."
She said of the name Onfroy had picked out for a girl, "It was Xiorra. With that, he took a couple of letters from different characters from his favorite video game, 'Kingdom Hearts,' and he just mashed it all together."
Sanchez wasn't even supposed to leave the house for the birth. There was a midwife ready to deliver the baby.
"The original plan was to have a home birth, but it didn't really work out," she said. "At this point, we're at 26 hours in labor. And they were, like, 'I'm sorry. We're going to have to do an emergency C-section.'"
She said she was a bit disappointed to not have the home birth.
"I feel like Jahseh and me wouldn't have had it any other way," Sanchez said. "I think it is very strange that the first thing a baby sees are all these doctors with masks and stuff all over their face. I don't think that's how a baby should be introduced to the world."
But, she said, there was a plan just in case the home birth got sidelined.
"We had a doctor on standby," she said. "He rushed right over and he told me, 'Jenesis, we gotta go.' We had all kinds of help. I had Cleo and my mom and a whole entourage. We had seven cars pull up to the hospital. People probably thought we were insane."
She said she and Onfroy had been a couple since January 2018, but they had known each other for a few years prior to that. She said the two met when a mutual friend introduced them at a birthday party.
Sanchez moved from Tampa to Parkland in February 2018 to be closer to him.
She said that, from the start, the two were inseparable.
"Me and Jahseh, we are like hermit crabs," she said. "We didn't like to go out. We spent a lot of time at home. We spent a lot of time playing video games. We really didn't care to go out because even if we did, people were noticing him. We even got to the point where we would go grocery shopping sometimes at midnight."
Sanchez doesn't acknowledge the stories about her boyfriend's controversial past.
At the time of his death, Onfroy was facing charges of domestic violence from a former girlfriend who said the rapper beat her. After his death, lawyers were able to get the charges dropped.
Sanchez has a tattoo on her neck inscribed with the rapper's real name, Jahseh. She said she will make sure her baby knows about his father.
"I'm definitely not going to ever lie about him. He's going to hear about his dad 24/7," she said. "I'm going to tell him about all the fond memories I have with his dad, Jahseh. I'm going to tell him how much his dad would have loved him. I know sometimes, probably when he gets older, it will affect him more than now when he is younger, but he's definitely going to know about his father."
Jahseh Onfroy would have turned 21 years old Jan. 23. Baby Yume was born Jan. 26.