Rosie O’Donnell thinks becoming a grandparent is like "having a baby times a million".
The 56-year-old actress flew straight to Wisconsin in December when her daughter Chelsea – who she adopted as a baby with ex-wife Kelli Carpenter – went into labour with her first child and though she missed the birth of Skylar Rose by just an hour, the star admitted that the feeling of becoming a grandparent for the first time is "beautiful" and "trite".
Speaking with Seth Meyers on Tuesday’s (29.01.19) ‘Late Night’, Rosie said: "I flew right in… I just missed the birth but I was there right after. It was something really beautiful. It’s very trite, but it’s what everyone says — when you’re a grandparent, it’s like [having] a baby times a million. And that’s what it felt like."
Chelsea and her boyfriend Jacob Bourassa welcomed Skylar into the world just a day after director Penny Marshall – who directed Rosie in her first movie, 1992’s ‘A League of Their Own’ – passed away and the tot gave her grandmother a timely reminder about the beauty of the "circle of life".
She said: "It was a big, big heartbreak when she died, and then my granddaughter was born the next day.
"So I got the call that she had passed, and then I got the call [about my granddaughter].
"It reminded me about the whole circle of life, and to remember every great thing that I had with her and that she really did give me a film career. I’ll be eternally grateful."
The ‘SMILF’ star has taken great delight in seeing Chelsea – who she reconciled with last June following a long period of estrangement – settling down into her own "contented" family unit.
She said recently: "[It’s been great] to see my daughter so happy and so content, and this guy who loves her so much, loving that baby. I think a lot of adopted kids feel, until they have their own child, they don’t have that unit, to look at someone who looks like them, to see genetically that they have their own kind of history. So it was really a very beautiful thing."
As well as Chelsea, Rosie also has Parker, 23, Blake, 19, and Vivienne, 16, with Kelli, and six-year-old Dakota with late second ex-wife Michelle Rounds.
Rosie O’Donnell says becoming grandparent is ‘beautiful’
