French president, wife welcome baby girl

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This article was published 20/10/2011 (5444 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PARIS — Carla Bruni-Sarkozy gave birth to a baby girl on Wednesday night — the first infant born to a sitting president of modern-day France, the French media reported.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, finishing up a meeting in Frankfurt on the European debt crisis, was absent when the couple’s first child was born shortly before 8 p.m. local time, according to BFM TV. He reportedly arrived at the private Muette Clinic at about 11 p.m. — his third trip Wednesday to the facility.

Europe 1 radio said the birth “went well” for the 43-year-old mother, a singer and former supermodel. She entered the medical facility in western Paris in the morning, accompanied by Sarkozy, according to the reports.

There was no official confirmation of the birth. The presidential entourage reiterated earlier Wednesday that no birth announcement would be made.

The couple had been coy about the pregnancy from the start, with measured doses of information.

“It’s obviously a happy event,” Nadine Morano, a junior minister and friend of the president, told BFM, clearly reacting to the news reports. Sarkozy was “very attentive, full of attention toward Carla” when he spoke with her by phone on Tuesday during a flight with the minister to Nice, she said.

The couple married in February 2008, less than a year after Sarkozy took office and less than four months after his divorce from his second wife, Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz.

The Italian-born Bruni-Sarkozy has a 10-year-old son from a previous relationship and the president has three sons from his two previous marriages — and is a grandfather since January.

Sarkozy was seen entering the medical clinic in late afternoon, then leaving about 30 minutes later, before rushing off to Frankfurt for a meeting on the debt crisis ahead of a European summit on Sunday. It was not immediately clear whether Sarkozy would cancel a scheduled Thursday-morning visit to Normandy.

The birth ended sometimes breathless speculation about Bruni-Sarkozy’s due date. Photographers had staked out the clinic since early October, with a security detail limiting their access.

Bruni-Sarkozy has said she was staying mum about the event because she’s superstitious. The couple also decided not to find out the baby’s sex in advance.

“You don’t have a child for the gallery,” Bruni-Sarkozy told French TV network TF1 earlier this month. “I will do everything to protect this child… I will not show photos of this child, I will never expose this child.”

Sarkozy is expected to seek a second mandate in presidential elections six months away. However, recent polls put his chief rival, Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, in the lead.

— The Associated Press