‘Mother and Baby Doing Very Well’: Boris Johnson’s Fiancée Carrie Symonds Gives Birth

Carrie Symonds, the fiancée of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has given birth to a baby boy, their spokesman said on Tuesday.

The couple — who are the first unmarried pair to live in the prime minister’s official residence at Downing Street in British history — welcomed a son. The birth comes just one day after Boris Johnson returned to work after recovering from coronavirus.

The prime minister’s spokesman said both mother and baby are “doing very well”.

They continued: “The prime minister and Ms Symonds are thrilled to announce the birth of a healthy baby boy at a London hospital earlier this morning.

“The PM and Ms Symonds would like to thank the fantastic NHS maternity team.”

The birth comes less than two months after Miss Symonds announced she was pregnant. The pair announced they were expecting a child “in the early summer” on March 1st, but declined to give a specific due date, so it is unclear whether today’s birth — in mid-Spring — was early or not.

Mr Johnson and Miss Symonds also announced that they had been engaged since the end of 2019, although it is not clear when they intend to wed.

While this is Boris Johnson and Carrie Symond’s first child together, it is not Mr Johnson’s, the prime minister already having been married and divorced twice. The prime minister has never confirmed how many children he has, although the number could be six or more.

April has been an unusually intense month for Mr Johnson, even by the normal standards of the political leader of a major nation. Besides the originally-intended centrepiece of the first year of his prime-ministership of shepherding Brexit talks with the European Union, Mr Johnson was hospitalised with coronavirus on April 5th, and moved to intensive care the following day.

Mr Johnson was released from hospital less than a week later and moved then to Chequers Court, a country house kept by the British government for the use of prime ministers, where he continued his recovery. Miss Symonds also displayed symptoms of coronavirus and went into isolation last month, but appeared to have not suffered with it as badly as Mr Johnson.

The timing of his illness and the birth of his son means the prime minister may very well roll directly from sick leave into paternity leave, meaning he will have led the British government for just one day before handing the reigns back to stand-in leader Dominic Raab, who is using his formal title the First Secretary of State for the duration.

When asked in March whether he would take paternity leave after Miss Symonds gave birth, the prime minister said then that he would, “almost certainly, yes”. Mr Johnson would not be the first prime minister to go on paternity leave, with David Cameron taking a break in 2010 after the birth of his daughter, Florence.

Congratulating Mr Johnson and Miss Symonds on the birth of their child, the speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle noted that between the good news and the prime minister’s health scare, that: “2020 is certainly a year they will never forget.”