Khai, about the birth and where (and how) the couple plans to raise their little girl.

Gigi talked openly about her 14 hours in labor and why the couple chose to do a home birth in Pennsylvania, where Gigi did not use epidural. Gigi and Zayn live together there in Bucks County, and her family has a farm nearby.

Gigi was joined by her mother, Yolanda, sister Bella, a local midwife, and the midwife's assistant in addition to Zayn during the birth. Zayn caught the baby when she came out: "It didn’t even click that she was out," Gigi said. "I was so exhausted, and I looked up and he’s holding her. It was so cute."

Gigi had originally planned to give birth at a New York City hospital, but because COVID restrictions would've kept Yolanda and Bella out of her delivery room, Gigi changed her birth plan. The model opted not to receive any drugs and candidly recounted how she got through the pain.

“I had to dig deep,” she 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. There definitely was a point where I was like, I wonder what it would be like with an epidural, how it would be different. 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.'"

“Afterward, Z and I looked at each other and were like, we can have some time before we do that again,” Gigi added.

She also said Zayn "likened his own experience of her birth to a lion documentary he’d seen in which a male lion paces nervously outside the cave while the lioness delivers her cubs." Gigi said, "Z was like, ‘That’s how I felt! You feel so helpless to see the person you love in pain.’"

Gigi intends to raise her daughter in Pennsylvania, she revealed to Vogue, rather than New York City, where she has $5.8M+ apartment. "I think she’ll definitely be raised here,” Gigi said. “The greenery and the farm-y lifestyle are similar to what made me feel really centered as a kid, and I think that’s really important to Zayn and me. I think that just giving your child the opportunity to explore different interests is such a beautiful thing.”

She added that applies to religion (Zayn is Muslim, while Gigi was raised with both Christian and Muslim traditions because of her parents' different religions) and Khai's ethnic background as well: “I think that [Zayn and I] both want our daughter to understand fully all of her background—and also we want to prepare her," she said. "If someone does say something to her at school, we want to give her the tools to understand why other kids would do that and where that comes from.”

As for privacy? Gigi has looked toward Blake Lively as an example. Blake, whose three daughters' lives have been kept largely private, spoke to Vogue about the advice she gave Gigi early in her pregnancy: “I told her you have to do what works for you. Gigi has a really special relationship with her fans, and I love how open she is on social media. I love seeing into her world. I’m grateful for what she shares but also understand whatever boundaries she chooses to set.”