Priyanka Chopra Jonas is opening up about her daughter Malti Marie’s extended stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in a cover interview with Today. The 40-year-old actor recalled rushing to the hospital with husband Nick Jonas after Malti was born via surrogate in January of last year.
“I remember [Nick] just held me by my shoulders, and I said, ‘Just tell me what to do, because I don’t know what to do,’” she told the outlet. “And he’s like, ‘Just get into the car with me.’ And we drove to the hospital.”
From that day forward, Chopra Jonas said, Malti Marie has “never been without one of” her parents by her side.
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“I realized very, very early that I did not have the luxury to be scared or to be weak because she was scared and weak,” she continued. “And I had to be her strength as her mom. I needed to make her feel at every given moment that she’s not alone…that we’ve got her.”
Malti ultimately spent more than 100 days in the NICU until she was released just in time for her first Mother’s Day as a parent. But coping with her daughter’s health scare at home came with another set of anxieties.
“[In the NICU], you know your child is alive because you can see their heartbeat,” Chopra Jonas recalled. “I couldn’t sleep for days because now suddenly she was home without a monitor. I used to put my ear on her chest. I would wake up every couple of minutes just to see if she was okay. For weeks, this went on.”
“It’s a blessing to have her home. It’s been wonderful,” the singer said.
But navigating the challenges of Malti’s first few months of life seems to have cemented her confidence as a parent. She’s set hard boundaries around her availability after work to ensure she’s present for “bath-time, story-time, and bedtime” with Malti, as well as quality time with Nick and friends. Motherhood, Chopra Jonas gushed, makes her feel as though she can “conquer the world.”
“When I wake up and do a million things, I can do them really well, because I know that I come back home to my family,” she concluded. “And that’s such a priority to me now.”
