New Zealand Welcomes High-Profile Citizen

PM Jacinda Ardern gives birth to baby girl in Auckland
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 21, 2018 6:57 AM CDT
New Zealand Welcomes High-Profile Citizen
Prime Minster Jacinda Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford pose with their newborn daughter at the Auckland City Hospital on Thursday.   (Office of the Prime Minister of New Zealand via AP)

It's a healthy baby girl for New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, now only the second elected leader in history to give birth while in office. Admitted to an Auckland hospital early Thursday, four days after her due date, the 37-year-old gave birth to the child weighing 7 pounds, 5 ounces around 4:45pm local time, reports the BBC. "Welcome to our village wee one," New Zealand's youngest PM in 162 years later captioned an Instagram photo of herself holding the child alongside partner Clarke Gayford. "Feeling very lucky," she added. "We're all doing really well." The event not only falls on New Zealand's winter solstice but on the birthday of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, the first elected leader to give birth back in 1990, per the BBC.

Ardern is the first to take maternity leave, however. She'll take six weeks off, but still be consulted on major issues as Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters takes the reins. "I am not the first woman to work and have a baby; there are many women who have done this before," Ardern said earlier this year. She was actually texting staffers while in labor, per the Australian, while Gayford shared a photo of Ardern reading work papers. "This is a sign of our maturity as a country and its acceptance that combining career and family is a choice which women are free to make," former PM Helen Clark says, per the New Zealand Herald. No word yet on a name. (More Jacinda Ardern stories.)

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