Tribute to Mothers: Gigi Hadid

New mom Gigi Hadid is going to great lengths to shield her daughter’s face from the public on outings and on social media.

Hadid and her partner Zayn Malik took their daughter, Khai, to the New York Aquarium in Coney Island in Brooklyn recently. Both Hadid and Malik wore protective face masks for the aquarium visit.

Khai has been on quite a few art-filled adventures with her parents in recent weeks. She explored the American Museum of Natural History with both her parents and toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a mommy-daughter date that included Hadid’s father, Mohamed Hadid.

In February, Hadid shared details about her daughter’s birth, revealing that she welcomed her first child at home surrounded by her family and partner.

Hadid had planned to give birth at a New York hospital, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, there was a limit on who could be in the delivery room, and so the couple decided a home birth was the right choice. Hadid was in labor at home for about 14 hours before giving birth.

Hadid’s doula, Malibu High classmate Carson Meyer, had prepared her for the moment when the mother feels she can’t go any longer without drugs. “I had to dig deep,” Hadid said. “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.”

A midwife coached Gigi through the pain. “There definitely was a point where I was like, I wonder what it would be like with an epidural, how it would be different,” Hadid said frankly. “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.’” So she kept pushing.

“I know my mom and Zayn and Bella were proud of me, but at certain points, I saw each of them in terror,” Gigi said, before confessing she is in no rush to have a second baby. “Afterwards, Z and I looked at each other and were like, ‘We can have some time before we do that again.’”