In Jan. 2022, news broke that Priyanka Chopra and her husband, “The Voice” mentor Nick Jonas, had become parents. Despite the wonderful news that their daughter was born via surrogate, the couple didn’t offer much more information. It wasn’t until recently that they revealed exactly how difficult that period was.
“The whole thing was tough, because our journey to Malti itself was really rough,” Chopra told Jay Shetty on his podcast. “I don’t want to get into details, because I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about it, but it was very hard on me.”
The actress went on to explain the extent to which she “shut down” after Malti was born.
Priyanka Chopra Details Terrifying NICU Days with Baby Malti
“She was my miracle baby, because she was my only hope at that time to have a baby,” Chopra admitted to Shetty. “So when we were told that she’s coming, like, at 27 weeks, I just shut down. I remember I sat in front of a fireplace in our house for, I think, like nine hours or something. And for someone who’s always so solution-oriented, I didn’t have a thought in my brain.”
She recalled that Jonas came to get her, they loaded up the car, and drove to the hospital. It was during COVID, and everything happening was “really intense.” Malti was purple and weighed 1 lb. 11 oz. She would go on to have six blood transfusions. She was so tiny that the NICU nurses’ little finger was even too big for her mouth. Chopra looked haunted by the thought of Malti’s intubation, explaining, “I still see that image.”
“I was just numb,” Chopra said. “I just remember, I didn’t know what to do or how to be useful in that moment.”
Her mom and in-laws came down to California, while Chopra and Jonas took turns in the NICU with their daughter.
Priyanka Chopra Describes Feeling Forced to Announce Malti’s Birth
Chopra described feeling “kind of forced” to announce Malti’s birth after receiving a text saying the news was “going to be put out by the papers.”
“We wanted to hold onto our own narrative of it, but we weren’t ready, ’cause we didn’t know what would happen with her, or how she would be,” she explained.
The couple spent the next three months in the NICU, doing shifts so that one of them was always with Malti. “The nurses said that from day two of life that we should be doing skin-to-skin,” the “Citadel” star said. Jonas would play guitar and sing to her, while Chopra put an iPod in her crib that quietly played her mantras.
When Malti finally came home, Chopra “wept for the grace that she survived,” she said emotionally. “The gratitude that she was home, that she chose us, that we could make this happen where she could be in this world and have this thriving life.”
