TODAY culinary contributor Giada De Laurentiis watched the show’s co-host, Matt Lauer, looking a bit green at the gills as he hung on to the rail of a small boat in the choppy waters off Greenland. It seemed like the perfect intro for a bit of happy news she couldn’t keep in any longer.
“I have to say I kind of understand how he’s been feeling, because the last four months, I’ve been feeling that way,” she told TODAY’s Natalie Morales and Hoda Kotb in the show’s studios in New York. “So I thought I’d share with you guys something I can’t hold back any longer — come April, I’m going to be a mom!”
As she gave away her secret and engaged in a round of congratulatory hugs, TODAY’s Al Roker gave a thumbs-up from the cloud forest on the equator in Ecuador, while Ann Curry, battling the Antarctic cold inside a red anorak in McMurdo Station, and Lauer applauded.
De Laurentiis is 37 and married since 2003 to clothing designer Todd Thompson. In a taped segment for TODAY, the chef, Food Network star and best-selling author said her fans and friends have been asking her THE question for about five years now.
“Every single person, every book signing I do, every public appearance, my friends, everybody,” she said, all tell her the same thing: ‘You know you're getting older! You can't have children forever!”
Although she indicated that she had a suspicion how such things happen, De Laurentiis said that her pregnancy was a total surprise.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I was in complete shock. Just shock,” she said.
And what about Todd? Kotb asked. “Is he freaked out? Is he excited?”
“Both,” De Laurentiis laughed. “He’s freaked out and he’s excited, all in one.”
The baby, a girl, is due in April, and she’s already had several sonograms. “When I had my first one, it looked like a little lima bean,” she said. “The second, I think looked a little bit like a lemon. But today — fingers and toes; I saw ears and lips.
“It brings tears to your eyes."
So far, De Laurentiis has gained just a couple of pounds. In the prerecorded segment, she asked Dr. Jane Cleary Goldman of Carnegie Hill Imaging for Women, her doctor in New York, how much she could expect to gain in her final two trimesters.
“Most people gain between 25 and 35 pounds,” Goldman said.
She said she can’t feel the baby inside her yet, but, she added, “I know my baby will be making itself known soon enough.”
She’s the star of Food Networks’ “Everyday Italian,” and the author of the best-selling book of the same name, along with two other cookbooks, “Giada’s Family Dinners” and “Everyday Pasta,” published last April. She’s cooked with Bobby Flay on “Iron Chef America,” and appears regularly on TODAY.
But now, the granddaughter of film producer Dino De Laurentiis has only one ambition: “I just hope that I can be a good mom.”