Pregnancy & Birth

Why Jacinda Ardern will be an amazing mum

Our Prime Minister and "First fisherman" Clarke Gayford are expecting and we reckon they have already shown us that they are more than ready to handle the jandal.

She isn’t afraid to be a little unconventional.

When Jacinda showed up to the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards, her dress was Juliette Hogan, but the jacket?

“It’s fake fur, and it’s from Save Mart, Save Mart Hastings.”

She is good with kids.

Three-year-old niece of her partner Clarke Gayford, Rosie helped her make her Christmas cards. And look at her giggle with Rosie and her sister Nina at her swearing in ceremony!

Her mum says she helped look after her sister when she was a kid.

“She even helped me with my other daughter! Louise would walk out wearing something and I’d think, ‘You can’t wear that!’ But it was Jacinda who would say it. I remember thinking, ‘This is good – I’m not the bossy one!'”

She’s got Clarke.

When Jacinda announced her pregnancy over Instagram, she said that she would wear the two hats of motherhood and Prime Minister, and “Clarke will be “first man of fishing” and stay at home dad.”

And around election time, Jacinda said in an interview that although she and Clarke didn’t see each other often, he helped where he could;

“We’d only had time to share a sandwich around a table with four Labour staff members, but when I got home, there was Panadol, Berocca, muesli bars, cups of noodles and he’d tidied the flat. It was really sweet.”

She loves her mum.

And we bet that lovely Laurell will be helping out Jacinda and Clark with grandma duty!

“Mum is generous to a fault. She’s very caring and very kind. She made lots of life choices that were all based on me and my sister.”

She got Winston to choose her.

And if you can get a seasoned politician to make a choice in your favour, you can probably get a toddler to try the broccoli.

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The top ten moments when Winston was Winston

She has Aunty Helen’s tick of approval.

“I think she’s had an amazing start,” Helen, 67, confesses in our latest issue. “The campaign was shaping up to be very, very boring, but it’s galvanised it. It’s put some life into it and got people talking about it, and that’s got to be good for democracy.” said the former PM, Helen Clark.

We reckon that is worth a mention that the former head of the United Nations Development Programme is a fan. Also, if she can take a campaign that could have been “very, very boring” and put some oomf in it sounds like a mum who could make a car ride fun.

She isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.

Who could forget when the then-Labour Leader (not yet PM) mucked in with her partner painting a fence at their Point Chevalier home while New Zealand cast their votes?

Not only does that show the couple’s coolness under pressure and kiwi spirit of DIY, Jacinda isn’t a stuffed shirt who is afraid to break a nail.

She is encouraging.

“If this doesn’t prove that anything’s possible then I don’t know what does,” says Jacinda.

“I’m the daughter of a policeman from Morrinsville. After my sister, I’m only the second one in my family to go to university. The idea that at 37 I would have been in the position to be Prime Minister, it’s just not something I ever would have imagined and I feel very privileged.”

Her heart-warming message to New Zealanders to dream big put a smile on our faces when it appeared in Woman’s Day. The PM’s child will grow up with no lack of the same encouragement.

She has a wicked sense of humour.

When Ed Sheeran asked her if he could become a New Zealand citizen she answered his request in a video.

In the tongue in cheek clip, she tells Ed that before she’s able to properly consider his request she has some very important questions.

“Do you like pineapple lumps?” and “are you willing to wear jandals in semi inappropriate situations?”

“And third, most important question of all – are you willing to make New Zealand your home?”

We don’t know about you but a sense of humour is on our list of top qualities we love in a mum.

She can handle anything.

One of the very first questions from a reporter last night was ‘Are you up to the job?’, she has been asked again and again about baby plans, dealt with sexism and has handled it all with grace.

We are sure this ability to handle anything that is thrown at her and think on her feet will serve her well as she juggles the top job with motherhood.

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Jacinda Ardern addresses claims that New Zealand has a right to know her baby plans

She cares immensely.

In an interview with NEXT, she voiced her reasons for being in politics and revealed that she cares deeply about people and the community.

“I’m just so desperate for us to be in a position where we can make a difference. And I know when I say that it’s very easy for it to seem like ‘Oh, they just want to win because they’ve been waiting for a really long time’, but it’s so much more than that,” she says, her tired tone shifting to one of urgency.

“I’ve got several constituency cases at the moment of people who are living in circumstances so horrific you feel compelled as an individual just to help. So as much as we go on about wanting to win in September, that doesn’t actually convey our motivation properly. It makes it sound like it’s just sport, like trying to win a trophy at the end of the race.”

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