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Priyanka Chopra and husband Nick Jonas welcomed their daughter Malti via surrogate in January 2022. Malti had to stay in the NICU until May, as she was born 12 weeks early. In a new interview with People, Chopra discussed motherhood and how it gets overwhelming “every single day.”
“I think when you put them to bed, it’s extremely overwhelming because every single day you worry about what you can do wrong and what mistake you might make,” she said. “But you have to check yourself, and I check myself with my family.”
Chopra went on to explain that she specifically checks in with her daughter to see how she’s doing.
“I look at [my daughter’s] smile, and I’m like, ‘Okay, okay. I’m doing good so far,’” she explained. “It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s extremely scary.”
The Citadel actress also shared how motherhood had changed her.
“It’s made me a tad more sensitive and fragile, I think, and it makes me nervous a little bit. I didn’t expect that,” she said.
Of the time Malti spent in the neonatal intensive care unit, Chopra said, “I don’t think it was our test. I think it was her test…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…I needed to make her feel at every given moment that she’s not alone. That we’ve got her.”
Malti was finally able to come home, which brought on new anxieties.
“'[In the NICU], you know your child is alive because you can see their heartbeat [on the monitor]. I couldn’t sleep for days because now suddenly she was home without a monitor,” Chopra said. “I used to put my ear on her chest. I would wake up every couple of minutes just to see if she was OK. For weeks, this went on.”
The couple have relaxed enough in recent months to take Malti out, even bringing her to a Jonas Brothers concert.
Her second birthday is right around the corner.
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.