Donald Trump Was Totally Surprised When He Found Out Melania Was Pregnant With Barron

To his fans, Donald Trump is the greatest president of all time. To his detractors, he's the worst by a long shot. And to a handful of very special people, he's simply "Dad." The former POTUS has five children by his three wives. Donald's first union, to Ivana Trump, produced his name-sake son Donald Trump Jr., as well as daughter Ivana "Ivanka" Trump, and their brother, Eric Trump. His second wife, Marla Maples, is the mother of Donald's second daughter, Tiffany Trump.  

The four eldest Trump children are all well into adulthood at this stage, married with children of their own. While Donald has a way to go to beat the sheer number of Duggar family grandchildren, his current total of 10 grandkids is still pretty impressive. Then there's the final offspring: Barron Trump, born to Donald and his current wife, Melania Trump. Only 11 when his father took office, Barron was the first son to live in the White House since John F. Kennedy, Jr., in 1960. 

The sons of Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, and both Bushes, on the other hand, were all adults by their fathers' inauguration. To many, it was surprising to see a middle-schooler accompanying a presidential dad who was a bit older than the norm. But it was Donald himself who had gotten the biggest shock more than a decade earlier when Melania revealed she was pregnant. 

At an age when most men are well past diaper-changing and preschool playdates, then-59-year-old Donald Trump became a father for the fifth time in March 2006. He had only just married Melania Knavs a little over a year earlier, and the news of her pregnancy came as something of a surprise to him. Melania told People she broke it to her husband the previous summer. "He came home ... and I told him he'd be a daddy. And his reaction was ... at first he needed to take it in. It was a real surprise. And then he was very happy," she recalled. 

The former president confirmed that children were indeed part of their plan, "[B]ut I was surprised by the speed of it. It happened very quickly." Once the initial shock wore off, the dad-to-be already had a name in mind for his third son. As Donald told Gayle King of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," he'd always liked the name Barron, but he wasn't brave enough to give it to either of his other sons, so Donald and Melania agreed on the choice early on. 

For reasons the controversial politician didn't fully elucidate, those jitters came back, and Donald tried to give Barron a name change at the last minute. Fortunately, Melania put her foot down — a tired new-mom foot, but a firm one nonetheless. After so many months of imagining a little Barron in the house, she wasn't about to do a name-switch after the fact.

Barron, the "happy surprise" Trump son, is a high school senior at the time of writing who will turn 18 in March 2024. His parents guarded Barron's privacy carefully during their years living in the White House, and they continue to do so as private citizens in their Mar-a-Lago estate. Barron isn't expected to join his father at any point during his 2024 presidential campaign, and if Donald Trump does win a second term in office, it's likely his youngest son will be off at college for most of the administration. 

In the years since Barron came into the family, his older half-siblings have been busy giving him cousins. Donald Trump Jr. has five children; his oldest, Kai, is just a little under a year younger than Barron. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have a daughter and two sons, while Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump, have a son and a daughter. Barron's other half-sister, Tiffany Trump, will celebrate her first wedding anniversary in November 2023; no baby news has been announced just yet.

Nor will there be any more coming from Donald and Melania Trump either. Even if a biological child wasn't near impossible for them at this point, the couple decided long ago to stop at one. Back in 2013, Melania told ABC News, "I don't like to say never, but my life is very busy." She added, "We are happy and my hands are full with my two boys — my big boy and my little boy!"