Barry Soper: Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford's baby Neve renews interest in New Zealand

There are many spinoffs for New Zealand with Jacinda Ardern giving birth to her daughter, Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford.

Only the second leader in the world to have done so ensures the news swept around the globe like wildfire, just as the photo of her, partner Clarke Gayford and baby Neve did over the weekend.

There'll be a renewed interest in this country. Hopefully those who haven't heard of us, or don't know where we are, will have consulted Google, and we'll be on the map and that can have many advantages. This is a positive story that can only enhance New Zealand's reputation as a socially liberal country.

But at the Ardern/Gayford household it'll be all hands to the pump today. She'll be at the kitchen table reading the Cabinet papers that her colleagues will be considering during the day, believe that and you'd believe that Winston Peters is to hand the reins over to Kelvin Davis, and Gayford will be changing the nappies which is probably more accurate.

As a new mother, Ardern won't get the time to sleep, let alone be wide awake enough to read. But she will have time to marvel in the new addition to her family, that's a given.

From my personal experience, the first born is literally life-changing. You can be forgiven for feeling that no one has ever produced anything like your new baby, rationality goes out the window. You instantly fall in love, you'd protect your new charge with your life.

You receive all sorts of advice and while some of it's useful, most of it's pretty useless.
For example the sure-fire solution to cure my first baby's sleeplessness was to put her in the car seat and drive around Wellington's Basin Reserve, which in those days wasn't controlled by traffic lights, meaning the journey was uninterrupted. It always took the same number of circuits, seven before sleep was assured.

To the great relief of all those who are a bunch of misery merchants about the baby and talk of it, publicity on that front is now expected to dry up for a while as the new parents hunker down to the demands of domesticity, away from the glare of publicity, and let Peters step up to Prime Ministerial power which for him will be business as usual.

He's effectively held that power ever since he anointed the winner after the last election so Jacinda Ardern can, at least on the political front, relax and so can we on the personal front. Phew!