He's just 7 weeks old, but tiny Julius Tapert is already having a taste of his mum's ferocious lifestyle on the set of XWP.

Action star Lucy Lawless barely had time to recover from his birth in October before she was due back in front of the cameras to tackle more legions of bad guys.

But now Xena is carrying an extra load -- her little boy has been written into the script and is carefully strapped to her back in a possum skin pouch. However, with all those swords and spears around, Lucy's strap-on baby is only a dummy -- the real Julius is safely tucked up with a nanny in a luxurious new trailer built especially for him and his mum.

Lucy, 31, is determined to continue breastfeeding Julius and not to miss seeing his progress, despite her grueling schedule on the Xena set in Auckland.

So she and husband Rob Tapert, the show's executive producer, commissioned the conversion of a giant truck into a lavish mobile nursery.

"Lucy always used a little camper van like all the other main characters, but this is something amazing," says an observer. "There's a nursing room, a lounge and a bathroom. It's real Hollywood superstar stuff, but you can't blame Lucy, she's working really hard. She took only one month off to have Julius, even though I'm sure like all mums she'd rather just be hanging out at home with him. Since the birth she has been able to start work later, and as soon as there's a break in filming she'll run back to the trailer to be with her baby. You can see just how devoted she is, and she loves showing Julius off to everyone. She has a nanny to look after him while she's on set, because you can't have babies around when you're filming and you need quiet, but she can't wait to get back and take over."

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