Let that sink in for a moment. Not kilograms. Pounds. A baby so small that when Priyanka Chopra Jonas finally felt her daughter’s fingers on her chest for the first time almost four weeks after she was born, those tiny fingers felt, in Priyanka’s own words, like butterflies. Speaking on Jay Shetty’s podcast, Priyanka described that moment with the kind of honesty that only a mother who has been through something truly terrifying can offer. “She was so tiny that her fingers felt like butterflies on me,” she said. “And in that moment, I was like, ‘I will go to the ends of the earth to protect you. It’s a feeling I never felt before.'” She paused. And then she said the line that every parent who has ever held their newborn will recognise completely. “Your heart is beating outside of your body.”
When survival is the only order of business
28 Jul 2026 | 16:22
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Malti Marie Chopra Jonas was born prematurely, at 27 and a half weeks. She spent weeks in the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit, before she was strong enough to come home. During those weeks, Priyanka and her husband Nick Jonas did not live like celebrities. They did not live like anyone the world had ever seen on a red carpet. They lived like parents, completely, utterly consumed by one tiny person and the urgent, non-negotiable business of keeping her alive.“Nick and I, as a team, didn’t need to talk to each other,” Priyanka said. “It was just done. We’d look at one another and we’d have the diaper bag ready. Tomorrow is her bath day; we’ll prepare everything. Make sure she needs this much milk. Every little thing about her, to make sure she gets that weight and just survives.” Just survives. Two words that carry the entire weight of those weeks. Everything else, the work, the films, the public life, the everything, took a backseat. The only order of business was Malti. And Priyanka and Nick showed up for that business with a focus and a unity that she says required no words. They simply knew.
The day they brought her home, and wept in front of the mandir
The day Malti came home was the day something shifted inside Priyanka completely. “She was still so tiny,” she said. “And I have a big mandir in our house with a big Shiv Ji’s murti. I’m a really big Shiva bhakt. I really believe that Bhole Baba has guided me through every difficult moment in my life.” The family sat together in front of the mandir. And Priyanka, who had held herself together through weeks of NICU visits and medical procedures and the constant, grinding fear that comes with having a premature baby, finally wept. “I just wept for the grace that she survived. The gratitude that she is home. That she chose us.”Those last three words. That she chose us. After the tears came celebration. A hawan to welcome Malti into the family. A naming ceremony. And then, slowly, the realisation that everything was real. Their daughter was home. She was safe. She was theirs.
The IVF journey behind the miracle
Priyanka has spoken openly about the fact that Malti came to them through IVF, a journey she describes as tough, as anyone who has been through it will understand. “I was grateful for everything because of which she is on earth,” she said simply. IVF is a process that demands an enormous amount from a woman, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. And then, even after a successful pregnancy, Priyanka faced the additional fear of a premature birth and weeks of uncertainty about whether her daughter would be strong enough to survive.The gratitude she felt when Malti came home was not the ordinary gratitude of a new parent. It was the gratitude of someone who had fought for this, through injections, through fear, through a NICU, through every difficult moment that Bhole Baba, she believes, guided her through.
What Priyanka’s story means for every mother
Priyanka Chopra Jonas is one of the most recognised women in the world. And yet the experience she describes, the terror, the helplessness, the fierce protective love, the inability to imagine life without this tiny person you have only just met, is one of the most universally human experiences there is. Every mother who has ever sat in a hospital hoping. Every parent who has ever prepared a bath with the focused attention of someone performing surgery. Every woman who has ever wept in gratitude in front of a deity and thought, Thank you, she is home.Priyanka’s words reach all of them. Her fingers felt like butterflies. Her heart beat outside her body. She became a tigress. And in a mandir in their home, with Malti finally there, finally safe, she wept for the grace of it all.