Carla Bruni Sarkozy: `I will never expose my child to the press`

The 43-year-old, who is due to give birth in the next few weeks, said that she has made an 'adult choice' to do everything possible to stop her baby appearing in the press.

In an interview which aired on Sunday on the TF1 program Sept A Huit, she explained, 'You don't have a child for the [photo] gallery.

'[My] position as the wife of the head of state has made me even more defensive. I understand the media interest, and I don't see any inconvenience in it for myself or my husband, but when it concerns the children, it's not impossible.

'I will do everything to protect this infant, and I'll be absolutely rigorous. I will never show photos of this child. I will never expose this child.'

Calling herself 'a little mother hen', she said that she did the same for her first child, Aurelian, now 11, but slipped up once when she took him on a very public date to the archaeological site at Petra in Jordan while dating her future husband Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008.

'My eldest son was exposed once, not in a public situation but in a private one, and it was a great error. I should never have taken my son to visit this magnificent site,' she said. 'I should have foreseen there would be photographers.'

She insisted that she does not know the baby's gender, 'I don't know myself, so the press knows better than I do.'