Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik have been loving life as first-time parents with their adorable baby girl, Khai. But after months of remaining low-key about living la vida loca (i.e. caring for a newborn), Gigi's back to modeling and sat down with Vogue to discuss what giving birth was like, how she and Zayn plan to raise bb Khai, and if/when they plan on expanding their fam.
Gigi initially wanted to give birth at a New York City hospital but opted to do a home birth on a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania—aka where she and Zayn currently live—so her mother Yolanda and sister Bella could be there with her. It took 14 hours sans epidural (!!!), but thankfully Gigi had Zayn, her mom, her midwife, and the midwife's assistant to guide her through the process.
It was intense, and Gigi said, "It didn’t even click that she was out. I was so exhausted, and I looked up and he’s holding her. It was so cute."
Gigi also talked about not getting an epidural, saying:
“I had to dig deep...I knew it was going to be the craziest pain in my life, but you have to surrender to it and be like, ‘This is what it is.’ I loved that. There definitely was a point where I was like, I wonder what it would be like with an epidural, how it would be different. My midwife looked at me and was like, ‘You’re doing it. No one can help you. You’re past the point of the epidural anyway, so you’d be pushing exactly the same way in a hospital bed.' Afterward, Z and I looked at each other and were like, we can have some time before we do that again.”
Zayn's obviously a proud papa, but he struggled with seeing Gigi go through something so intense. Zayn reportedly "likened his own experience of her birth to a lion documentary he’d seen in which a male lion paces nervously outside the cave while the lioness delivers her cubs," to which Gigi said, "Z was like, ‘That’s how I felt! You feel so helpless to see the person you love in pain.’"
Now that the birth is out of the way, Gigi and Zayn are looking ahead to how they'd like their daughter Khai to grow up. "I think she’ll definitely be raised here [in Pennsylvania],” Gigi said. “The greenery and the farm-y lifestyle are similar to what made me feel really centered as a kid, and I think that’s really important to Zayn and me. I think that just giving your child the opportunity to explore different interests is such a beautiful thing.”
Those interests to potentially expand to religion, too. As a reminder, Zayn is Muslim, while Gigi grew up with Christian and Muslim traditions as a child. “I think that [Zayn and I] both want our daughter to understand fully all of her background—and also we want to prepare her," Gigi continued. "If someone does say something to her at school, we want to give her the tools to understand why other kids would do that and where that comes from.”
Sounds like Khai is going to have the most magical childhood, and quite frankly, I am a *little* jealous!
