Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas announced the birth of their daughter, Malti Marie Chopra Jonas, via surrogacy in January 2022. But she was a premature baby and remained in the neonatal intensive care unit. In a recent interview, Priyanka spoke about her fear and the uncertainty and fear of losing her at that time.
She remembered how difficult it was for her, but in the end she became a tigress through it all and wanted to protect her daughter at all costs. Priyanka spoke about the matter on Jay Shetty’s show, on purpose, saying, “The whole thing was difficult because our trip to Malta was difficult in itself. I don’t know if I was ready to talk about it but it was very difficult for me, and she is a miracle baby because she was my only hope at that time that I would be able to have a child.”
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The shock intensified when the doctors told them that Malti would be born after only 27 weeks. “So when we were told she was coming at 27 weeks, I just shut down. I remember sitting in front of the fireplace in our house for at least 9 hours. And for someone who is always solution-focused, I had no idea in my mind. Nick was somewhere and he came back and got me and we went to the hospital.”Recalling Malti’s birthday, Priyanka said the circumstances were overwhelming, made worse by the pandemic.
“It was COVID times and the position she was born into was a lot of duress for everyone involved. It was really intense. She was purple. The NICU nurses’ little fingers were too big for her mouth. How she was intubated… I still see that picture. Fortunately, everything was fine with our surrogate, so we could focus our energy on Malty.”
I was just numb. “I didn’t know what to do and how to be useful at that moment.”The first days in the neonatal intensive care unit left a deep emotional mark. “We went with her to the neonatal intensive care unit.
One of us was allowed once, and she cried the first time. He was like a cat. That’s all we got. My mother and in-laws flew out, but we were in the hospital. “It was a painful time on a personal level.”Adding to the tension was the pressure to announce Malti’s birth before they were emotionally ready. “I remember it was leaked and we got a text saying that her birth was going to be published by the newspapers… and if we didn’t, it would be published in three hours.
So we kind of had to announce her birth. We wanted to stick to our own narrative of it. We weren’t prepared because we didn’t know what would happen with her or what she would be like.
“Malti spent nearly four months in intensive care, a period during which Priyanka and Nick put everything else on hold. “It’s been three months, almost 110 days. We stopped everything. We were in the hospital every day. We were doing shifts so she could be on our skin.”After medical guidance, the couple focused on direct skin-to-skin contact and relaxing sounds. “Nick would sing to her on his guitar. I used to have this little iPod that would play all my mantras, the Mahamrityunjay mantra, the Gayatri mantra, the Om Namah Shiv mantra. All of that would play all day long inside her bed quietly.”The medical challenges were relentless. She was so desired, so desired and cherished.
“It was very difficult… I had six blood transfusions.”Looking back on that period, Priyanka Chopra said that becoming a mother radically changed the way she dealt with fear and vulnerability. “Once I came out of the state of shock I was in, I realized how scared she was. So I didn’t have the honor of being upset or afraid. I had to show up as her mother and be tough on her.”She also recalled the first time she held her daughter, Malti Marie Chopra Jonas, close to her chest, a moment that left an indelible mark on her.
“When she was on my chest for the first time…she was so small that her fingers felt like butterflies on me. She weighed 1 pound, 11 ounces, and in that moment I said, ‘I’ll go to the ends of the world to protect you.’That instinct quickly turned into fierce vigilance. “She became a champion in everything — from her nutrition to her medications to her blood transfusions. Nick and I were a team… every little thing about her made sure she got to that weight and stayed alive was the only thing that mattered to the business. Everything else took second place.”Malti’s repatriation was another profound emotional turning point. “The day we got her back, she was so tiny. We sat as a family in front of our mandir. That was the first time I really cried — for the blessing that she had survived.”
