Sonia Kruger’s baby steps and heartbreak as longed-for daughter Maggie turns one
THERE will be cake to celebrate the first birthday of Sonia Kruger’s longed-for daughter Maggie — and a candle for the Nine star’s late beloved father.
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PLAYING happily with her glamorous mother’s Jimmy Choo heels, Sonia Kruger’s daughter Maggie is blissfully unaware of the hard road it took her famous parents to bring her to life.
Celebrating her first birthday today, the cheeky cherub dazzles with her beaming smile, bright blue eyes and a party dress bought for her by mum’s Channel 9 co-star David Campbell.
After years of fertility issues, it was Kruger’s joyous confirmation of ‘Mags’ birth which made front page headlines last year — a medical marvel and a lifelong dream realised for the 50-year-old first-time mother and her partner, Seven News boss Craig Macpherson.
Admitting her pregnancy had been an anxious one, the relief of finally welcoming her precious, healthy baby — born with the use of a friend’s donor egg — has now turned to sheer fun.
“It’s been all I expected and then some,” Kruger told NewsCorp Australia. “I listened to people talking about it when I didn’t have children, about how amazing it is, and how it changes your life, but it’s still not until you have a baby that you realise how much fun they are.”
Surrounded by her besotted father (“her first word was definitely Dadda,” Kruger confesses), his six children from a previous marriage and Kruger’s brother and sister who are the parents of six cousins for Maggie, there’s no shortage of cuddles and love for the longed for little one.
A small bruise on the sweet girl’s forehead is the result of her “cruising” efforts around the house — a cross between walking and crawling and crashing her way around the home.
When Maggie was a tiny baby, Kruger confesses she “was like the Shirley MacLaine character in Terms Of Endearment, where she kept going in and pinching the baby ... but now she’s as strong as an ox.”
And a relaxed one, which the TV presenter puts down to her own contentment: “when you have a baby after wanting one for so long, everything else does just slot into second place. It’s easy for them to be your main focus.”
While her child’s safe birth marked the start of a motherhood experience Kruger thought she’d never know, it has also been tinged with sadness after the passing of her father, Adrian, who died just months Maggie was born.
Her eyes welling with tears, Kruger said the highs and lows made for a raw and emotional 12 months.
“It’s been the greatest year but the hardest of my life,” she said.
The absence of her darling dad at Christmas, in particular, proved incredibly painful for Kruger’s extended family, who all holidayed in Hawaii to escape.
“When I’d hear Bing Crosby singing ‘I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas’ ... Dad always used to sing that,” she said, “it’s just been hard.”
A sleepless flight over with Maggie didn’t get the trip off to the best start, with the former Big Brother favourite concerned she may have disturbed the journey of Harvey Norman boss and fellow business class passenger, Gerry Harvey.
But there’s been more laughs than tears for the working mum, who is set to return to her weekday work from February 8 when Nine will unveil Today Extra — its newly branded Mornings program, complete with a new set — and also begins blind auditions for The Voice at the end of February.
Email: holly.byrnes@news.com.au
Twitter: @byrnesh
Originally published as Sonia Kruger’s baby steps and heartbreak as longed-for daughter Maggie turns one
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