FRENCH first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy gave birth to a baby girl on Wednesday night — the first infant born to a sitting president of post-revolutionary France, the French media reported.

    President Nicolas Sarkozy, finishing up a meeting in Frankfurt on the euro debt crisis, was absent when the couple’s first child was born.

    Europe 1 radio said the birth “went well” for the 43-year-old mother, a singer and former supermodel. She entered the medical facility in western Paris in the morning accompanied by Sarkozy, according to the reports.

    There was no official confirmation of the birth. The presidential entourage reiterated earlier Wednesday that no birth announcement would be forthcoming.

    The couple had been coy about the impending birth from the start with measured doses of information.

    “It’s obviously a happy event,” Nadine Morano, a junior minister and friend of the president, told BFM, clearly reacting to the news reports. Sarkozy was “very attentive, full of attention toward Carlo” when he spoke with her by phone Tuesday during a trip with the minister to Nice, she said.

    The couple married in February 2008, less than a year after Sarkozy took office and less than four months after his divorce from second wife Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz.

    The Italian-born first lady has a 10-year-old son from a previous relationship and the president has three sons from his two previous marriages — and became a grandfather in January.

    Sarkozy was seen entering the medical clinic in the late afternoon, then leaving after about 30 minutes — before rushing off to Frankfurt for a meeting on the euro debt crisis ahead of a European summit Sunday.

    (SD-Agencies)     

About Carla Bruni                                   

    THE French first lady is an Italian-French songwriter, singer, actress, and former model. She has been married to French President Nicolas Sarkozy since February 2008.

    Born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi in 1967 in Turin, Italy, she is heiress to the fortune created by the Italian tire manufacturing company CEAT, founded in the 1920s by her grandfather Virginio Bruni Tedeschi. The family moved to France in 1975.

    Bruni grew up in France from age 7 and attended boarding school in Switzerland. She went to Paris to study art and architecture, but left school at 19 to become a model.

    Following her marriage to Sarkozy, Bruni continued accompanying him on state visits, including to the United Kingdom in March 2008, which created a sensation in the international press and the public in the United Kingdom and France.

    In December 2008, Bruni sued the makers of a bag featuring a nude shot of the French first lady taken during her supermodeling youth. Clothes designer Pardon has produced 10,000 of the shopping bags emblazoned with the nude photo taken in 1993.

    On May 17 this year, it was announced that Bruni and her husband were expecting a child. Their daughter was born Wednesday.

    (SD-Agencies)