French President Nicolas Sarkozy has described the birth of his first child with wife Carla Bruni as a ‘very deep joy’.
Mr Sarkozy was not present for the birth of their daughter last night as he was in Germany to attend talks on the eurozone crisis.
However the French leader visited his wife at the Paris clinic before midnight and then again for 50 minutes this morning.
"We have been lucky enough to find great happiness. All the parents here understand our very profound joy, a joy all the deeper because it is private," Mr Sarkozy said later on a factory visit in the western Mayenne region.
The first couple had decided not to officially announce the birth, but the president reacted warmly when waste-processing plant workers gave him gifts.
"Oh, that's really kind, very thoughtful," he smiled, telling workers who asked after his wife and child: "They're doing really well."
Asked what the child would be called, Sarkozy said: "We're going to let Mum have the pleasure of revealing that."
Mr Sarkozy continues to have a full political schedule, battling to rescue the economy and his own hopes of re-election.
With seven months to go, today’s latest BVA opinion poll predicted his political career was about to be buried in a Socialist landslide, with opponent Francois Hollande beating him by 64% to 36% in a second-round run-off.
Asked whether the birth would influence the election, with perhaps a "baby bump" in Mr Sarkozy's polling numbers, Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said: "In any event, it will have an impact on Nicolas Sarkozy. He's very happy.”
Ms Bruni, a 43-year-old Italian-born heiress turned supermodel turned singer, was famous even before she married Sarkozy in early 2008 after a whirlwind romance, and the birth made headlines around the world.
But in France itself, where the public is accustomed to politicians' private lives staying private, the event was accorded a more muted reception, with some newspapers barely covering it at all.
In less than five years, Mr Sarkozy has become the first president of France's modern Fifth Republic to divorce while in office, the first to remarry and now the first to have a child.
In 2007, when his relationship with his second wife Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz broke down and he quickly took up with the glamorous Carla, voters were turned off by the very public display of his romantic adventures.
Mr Sarkozy seems to have learned the lesson of that period, and has been extremely discreet about the pregnancy. Both the president and first lady have said they will not parade the child for photographers.
The Élysée Palace never announced the pregnancy officially, but carefully outed Ms Bruni as pregnant by allowing her to appear with a visible bump at an event to welcome fellow first ladies to the G8 summit in Deauville in May.
Ms Bruni has a 10-year-old son from a previous relationship and thrice-married Sarkozy has three sons aged between 14 and 26.
Ms Bruni has said she will continue working on her singing career after the birth, and Sarkozy seems unlikely to take France's two-week paternity leave.
