Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, announced on Sunday she had named her new-born daughter Neve Te Aroha as she prepared to leave hospital amidst an outpouring of public excitement.
Ms Ardern appeared before dozens of reporters and a flurry of camera flashes at Auckland City Hospital in her first appearance since giving birth, thanking the public for their support as her three-day-old daughter slept in her arms.
"We really just wanted to say thank you and that we’re all doing really well. Sleep deprived, but really well," she said.
Ms Ardern, 37, became New Zealand’s youngest prime minister when she took office through a coalition deal last year after an inconclusive election. She has now become the first woman in the country’s history to give birth while in office.
She delivered her 3.31 kg (7.3 lb) daughter in the country’s largest public hospital on Thursday afternoon with her partner, television presenter Clarke Gayford, at her side.
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The couple had settled on the baby’s first name, Neve, after she was born, her mother said, explaining that it means "bright and radiant" and "snow", which reflected that she was born in the middle of winter during the nation’s indigenous Maori new year and the shortest day of the year.
Her second name, Te Aroha, which means "love" in Te Reo Maori, one of the country’s national languages, was a nod to the many Maori iwi, or tribes, that had offered names as a gift to Ms Ardern while she was pregnant.
Ms Ardern will take the next six weeks off, leaving her deputy Winston Peters in charge, and return to work in early August when Mr Gayford will care for the baby full-time.
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Many in New Zealand and around the world had held up her pregnancy – just the second time an elected leader had given birth in office since Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto in 1990 – as a symbol of progress for women.
"Hopefully these things that in these moments now are…a novelty…one day they aren’t new any more," Ms Ardern said.
"I hope for little girls and boys that actually there’s a future where they can make choices about how they raise their family and what kind of career they have that are based on what they want and what makes them happy."