“I’d been wanting to have a child for a really long time, but I wasn’t trying, just put it like that,” Madonna says. “It was one of those weird surprises. I was so engrossed in making the movie that I wasn’t paying attention to my body. I didn’t have any symptoms — any feelings of fatigue or strangeness. I attributed to working too hard.”

“Later I was tired and I’d sometimes feel a bit nauseous, but we were shooting outside and it was 100 degrees [38oC] every day and everyone was feeling a bit sick. If I said, ‘I kind of feel sick’, the girl doing my make-up would say, ‘I feel sick, too ···· I think the lunch was bad’. And I’d think, ‘ Yeah, lunch must have been bad’. I never, ever thought that I was pregnant, It just didn’t seem like a viable option.”

Madonna’s pregnancy was later confirmed by her doctor in New York, before the ‘Evita’ cast and crew flew on to Budapest, Hungary, to complete filming. “When I finally did find out, it was kind of like, ‘No way! Really? No! I’m making a movie right now — that’s absurd’,” she recalls, laughing. “But then it was like the greatest thing in the world.”

She also had an ultrasound. “When you take a blood test and they say, ‘You’re pregnant’, you just go, ‘Oh and don’t feel any different really’. But when you see the little baby and it’s …[she indicates a few centimeters between her fingers] then it hits you like a ton of bricks. It’s real. I cried when I heard my baby’s heartbeat. It was the most incredible experience. I fell in love,” she says, her eyes literally shining with emotion.

Even though she and ‘Evita’ director Alan Parker decided to suppress news of her pregnancy for as long as possible to keep all attention focused on the film, Madonna says her condition actually helped her with her portrayal of Eva Peron, who died of cervical cancer in 1952, at the age of 33.

“It did add another layer of tension to filming.” She admits, “ because I’d be worried that I was on my feet too long or working too many hours. I had lot of dancing to do [Eva was a tango aficionado] until I was about four and a half months. There was a lot of jumping and sometimes I fell and I’d think, ‘I’ve done it this time’, and I’d rush to the doctor to make sure everything was okay. I must be built like a tank, because nothing happened.”

“It made me very protective of myself, and I think that helped my character, because Eva always had a lot of health problems, Problems with haemorrhaging — she had really heavy periods and things like that. And when she found out she had cervical cancer, she hid it form people for a long time. I think she was very protective over that part of her body,” Madonna says, enfolding her tummy, and so I used that. I easily could imagine being more frail, wanting badly to protect this part of my body, That feeling of being vulnerable.”

Madonna’s pregnancy has been smooth. “ I’ve never been sick, just more tired than usual. I’ve been really lucky, I have to say,” she reports, rapping on the table beside her. “ Touch wood !” She pauses to sip a frothy iced coffee from a plastic tumbler.

“Instead, I just feel I don’t fit into spaces anymore, and it’s getting harder to put my shoes on. I bent over to put my shoe on the other day and fell off the bench. I thought to myself, ‘This is really going to bumble me’.”

“Some days I wake up and feel like a million bucks; there’s a life growing inside me and I’m the luckiest person in the and I’m the luckiest person in the world. And then other days I get up and just go, ‘Uggghhh….I’m a fat pig, I’m as big as a whale’. I took in my closet and I just can’t find anything to wear.

“It’s difficult when you’re used to being really fit and agile, having an enormous amount of energy and strength and a really flat stomach. It’s difficult when suddenly you have to surrender your body, and it’s a very good lesson for me.”

“ It’s given me license to relax in a way that I never really allowed myself to . And, you know, deep in my heart it’s all very good for me. It’s good for me to have to deal with all these changes. It’s going to be good for me to have the baby and have fat and then have to get rid of it.”

要做母亲的麦当娜

“很久以来我就想要个孩子，但并没有刻意去要，只是顺其自然，”麦当娜说：“那是种异样的兴奋。当时我正专注于拍电影，并没在意身体的变化。我没有任何征兆 — 我从未感觉疲劳或不适。我工作得太投入了。”

“后来我觉得疲劳而且时常有点儿恶心，但当时我们在室外拍摄，每天温度高达100华氏（38摄氏度），大家都觉得恶心。要是我说，“我觉得有点儿难受，给我化妆的女孩就会说：‘我也难受···· 八成是午餐变质了’，于是我就觉得，‘对，一定是午饭坏了’。我从未想过我怀孕了。我看上去不大可能。”

后来在《埃维塔》一片的角色和剧组人员准备飞往匈牙利布达佩斯完成拍摄前，麦当娜在纽约的大夫证实了她的妊娠。“当我最终认定时，确实有点象，‘不行，真的？不！我正在拍电影，这太荒谬了’，”她笑着回忆道。“可随之这件事仿佛又成了天底下最了不起的事。”

她也做了超声波检查。“当你验血时他们说，‘你怀孕了’，你不用管它， ‘哦，没什么了不起的’。可当你看到了小孩子而那是个······[她用两个指头比划着几厘米]，那时它就如同重石捶胸。真的。当听到小宝贝的心跳动时我哭了。那是最非凡的体验。我坠入爱河了，”她说着，双眼闪着激动的光。

尽管她与《埃维塔》的导演艾伦·派克决定封锁她怀孕的消息并尽可能久地将精力集中在影片上，麦当娜说她的状况的确有助于她去更好地刻画爱娃·庇隆重的形象，爱娃1952年死于子宫颈癌，年仅33岁。

“这的确给拍摄增添了一层紧张气氛，” 她承认道，“因为我担心站立的时间太长或工作过久。我得经常跳舞[爱娃是个探戈的舞迷]一直到怀孕四个半月的时候才不跳了。那时经常跳来跳去，有时会摔倒并且还在想，‘我这次又摔跤了’，然后就跑到大夫那儿看看有没有事。我身体一定像坦克，要不然怎么一点事也没有呢。”

“怀孕使我非常注意保护自己，同时我想这也有助于我饰演的角色，因为爱娃的身体总不是很好。她患过大出血以及诸如此类的毛病— 经期时曾很严重。当她得知她患有子宫颈癌时，将此事隐瞒了许久，我想她一定非常注意保护身体的那个部位，” 麦当娜捂着肚子说，“所以我也就那样。我很容易想象自己的身体比爱娃更虚弱，急需保护自己身体的这个部位。那种脆弱的感觉真令人难以想象。”

麦当娜的妊娠期较为顺利。“我从未感到恶心，只是觉得比平常累点我儿。我承认，自己真的很幸运”她叩击着身旁的桌子说：“避避邪！”她停下来呷了一口塑料杯里浮满泡沫的冰镇咖啡。

“我只是觉得发胖了，鞋子很难穿了。有一天我弯腰穿鞋时从凳子上摔了下来。我心里想：‘这简直是要我难堪’。”

“有时我醒来感觉像个大款；体内生命的蠕动使我觉得自己是全世界最走运的人。而有时下地走一走，‘哈哈—我是头肥猪，大得象只鲸鱼’。看看衣柜里，我找不到合身的衣服。”

“你平时苗条灵活，精力充沛，这下子可难了。你突然间要听从身体的摆布，这对我是个极好的教训。”

“怀孕倒使我有了从前享受不到的放松自己的自由。要知道在我内心深处我是很乐意的。对待这些变化对我是有益的，有了孩子而且身体变胖然后又得减肥，这将是非同寻常的。”