Maria Menounos and her husband, Keven Undergaro, have added to their family.
The couple announced the birth of their daughter via surrogate in Us Weekly magazine.
Menounos, who has had issues with infertility, said the birth of their daughter is something that she’ll never forget.
“It was the most special moment of my life,” she told the magazine. “The doctor literally grabbed her and hiked her onto me. I sat with her on my chest, and Keven and I kept looking at each other like, ‘Oh, my God.’ It was just pure joy.”
“It was like Christmas morning times a million,” Undergaro said.
They named their daughter, who was born on June 23, Athena Alexandra, Entertainment Tonight reported. She was born in Milwaukee, Us Weekly reported.
Before welcoming their first baby, Maria Menounos and husband Keven Undergaro formed an unshakeable bond with their surrogate. https://t.co/HyswLi09yS
— Us Weekly (@usweekly) July 19, 2023
Her birth was a decade in the making.
Menounos has had several health challenges over that time. She was diagnosed with a meningioma brain tumor in 2017. Menounos had a seven-hour surgery to remove the benign tumor that same year.
Her mother, Litsa, was also battling stage four cancer at the same time, but died in 2021.
Prior to the cancer diagnosis, the couple had started the process for invitro fertilization, going so far as to have embryos frozen, but Menounos’ cancer diagnosis prevented that. Her neurosurgeon said she shouldn’t carry a child, Us Weekly reported.
She talked about that challenge in 2019.
“The only weird thing is that I froze embryos and now I can’t implant them because if I implant them and do all the hormones, the tumor will grow [back.] So, there is one way around it that we’re investigating right now and then otherwise a surrogate,” she told Entertainment Tonight.
In 2020, the couple had a surrogate lined up but that fell through.
In February, Menounos shared that she and her husband were able to conceive a child successfully.
“Just after a decade of trying everything, we are so grateful to the beautiful family helping us conceive our baby,” she said according to Entertainment Tonight. “Keven, my dad and I are all beyond excited for this soul to come into our lives. What a blessing,”
“Athena is our miracle baby,” she told Us Weekly. “I’m so grateful for her.”
