Meghan McCain Welcomes Baby Girl with Husband Ben Domenech: 'Happy and Healthy'
Meghan McCain's bundle of joy has arrived, PEOPLE confirms.
The View co-host and her husband, Ben Domenech, welcomed daughter Liberty Sage McCain Domenech on Monday night.
A rep for McCain, 35, says she and her daughter ″are happy and healthy."
Video: McCain kept pregnancy private due to ‘social media cess pool’
The news of her baby girl's birth comes about two weeks after McCain gave fans an update on her pregnancy by sharing her due date.
Posting a selfie of her ″topknot″ on her Instagram on Sept. 18, McCain wrote in the caption, ″2.5 weeks until my due date and trying to keep myself looking as stylish as humanly possible while feeling like shamu."
The expectant star capped off the message with three emojis of a pregnant woman.
McCain, who announced in March that she was pregnant, previously said that she didn't want to expose her child to the vitriol that can accompany her social media posts, where trolls sometimes leave hateful words about her late father, Sen. John McCain.
″People keep asking and requesting I show pics & details of my pregnancy," she shared on social media in May. ″Given that people write on photos I put up of my family they are glad my Dad got cancer and he's in hell, I thought I would leave my unborn child out of the social media cesspool as much as is possible."
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A post shared by Meghan McCain (@meghanmccain) on Sep 18, 2020 at 8:18am PDT
She continued in a lengthy Instagram caption, saying she and Domenech, 38, ″have made the conscious decision to guard our (growing) families privacy as much as is possible" and adding, in part, "I believe children have a right to privacy and hope you will all understand as we navigate this as much as possible going forward without sacrificing our comfort or safety."
Returning to The View in late March after announcing her pregnancy, in what would become her regular remote appearances, McCain said the news was ″bittersweet because there's just a lot of people in a lot of pain right now, and I obviously would prefer to be in studio with all of you.″
″I keep trying to remind myself that people have had babies in much worse and much more intense conditions and, you know, this is just how it's going to be for a little while," she said.
In that March episode, McCain also noted that View moderator Whoopi Goldberg had correctly predicted her pregnancy.
″Whoopi told me like a year ago that I was going to have a child and she told me the gender — and you were 100 percent right. This doesn't help my feeling that you have psychic abilities that I always thought you had,″ she said. ″I told my mother, ‘Whoopi was right about everything including the timing.’ "
A post shared by Meghan McCain (@meghanmccain) on May 28, 2020 at 1:31pm PDT
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Last month, McCain opened up about why she hasn't yet shared any photos of her belly to social media, saying in an Instagram Story, "I'm sorry I'm still not sharing pics of my baby bump — there are a lot of cruel things written about me in the press on an almost constant/daily basis."
"Normally I just let it go because it comes with the territory of being an outspoken conservative woman on TV — but I've felt intensely protective and private over this time in my life and the privacy of my child,″ McCain wrote. ″I hope all the wonderful people who are so supportive and kind understand!″
However, the Daytime Emmy nominee did give fans a glimpse into how she's preparing for her baby by sharing that ″the nesting phase of pregnancy is NO joke.″
″Pray for my husband and the amount of boxes he's had to open in the past few weeks ... " she wrote on social media in August, tacking on a shrugging-woman emoji.
Weeks earlier, she gushed of Domenech's support in an Instagram post: "We’re so lucky, Ben. Thank you for taking such wonderful care of my bloated, knocked up, swollen, pandemic navigating self. I don’t know what I would do these days without such a strong, loving partner."
McCain has spoken jokingly before about the pressure to have kids, especially from mom Cindy.
“She has never asked me before and then all [of a] sudden she brings it up all the time,” McCain told PEOPLE in June 2018. “It’s hilarious and uncomfortable.”
A post shared by Meghan McCain (@meghanmccain) on Jul 2, 2020 at 2:23pm PDT
Her journey to motherhood has included grief as well. Last summer, McCain wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which she revealed she previously had a miscarriage.
“For a brief moment, I had the privilege of seeing myself in the sisterhood of motherhood,” she wrote then.
“I loved my baby, and I always will,” she wrote. “To the end of my days I will remember this child — and whatever children come will not obscure that.”
McCain and Domenech, a writer and website publisher, have been staying in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Monday was her first day off from The View and she is expected to return in about three weeks, before the presidential election.