Priyanka Chopra Shares the Heart-Wrenching Story of Baby Malti's Pre-Term Birth: 'I Didn’t Know if She Would Make It'

Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas’s daughter Malti Marie just celebrated her first birthday on Sunday, and what a tumultuous year it’s been for the little family. The couple have been open about the fact that their baby, whom they welcomed via surrogate, spent her first 100 days in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) before coming home by Mother’s Day. Now for the first time, Chopra Jonas is sharing the heart-wrenching details about Malti’s first several months on Earth in a vulnerable new interview. Grab the tissues — her story will emotionally wreck you.

In a Feb. 2023 cover interview with British Vogue, the Quantico star shared that Malti was born at 28 weeks, which was 12 weeks before her due date and considered “extremely” premature. “I was in the OR [operating room] when she came out,” Chopra Jonas recalled. “She was so small, smaller than my hand.”

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I can only imagine how terrifying that experience must have been. To see your baby born so tiny and not being able to do much other than trust in the doctors to take care of her would be so hard. Luckily, they were there together.

“I saw what the intensive-care nurses do. They do God’s work,” she continued. “Nick and I were both standing there as they intubated her. I don’t know how they even found what they needed [in her tiny body] to intubate her.”

My heart goes out to them — and anyone who has gone through a similar situation with a pre-term baby. Becoming parents is hard enough, but adding the stress of seeing your little one fight for their life? It could break anyone.   

British Vogue details how Chopra Jonas and Jonas had to go to the NICU daily, first at Rady Children’s Hospital in La Jolla, then at Cedars-Sinai in LA, to see Malti. Their extended families flew in to help, but the COVID-19 guidelines didn’t allow anyone else inside the hospital to see the baby. “We spent every single day with her on my chest, on my husband’s chest,” Chopra Jonas told the outlet.

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