Olivia Munn is opening up about her daughter’s birth and why welcoming her via surrogate gave her an entirely new parenting perspective.
“A lot of times people say, ‘Oh, the dads don’t really connect with the baby until it’s right there in front of them,” Munn, 44, told People in an interview published on Saturday, June 7. “The dads, they’re not carrying the baby. I carried Malcolm, so I understood from the very genesis like, okay, I’ve got a life in me. Your body is changing and your energy is changing and your hair is changing and everything’s changing, so it feels very real all the time.”
She continued, “Even though it all felt very real for me, and our surrogate and I spoke all the time and she’d send me videos, it was a little bit of, ‘Oh wait, she’s coming.’ I felt like an expectant father.”
Munn and her husband, comedian John Mulaney, welcomed their daughter Méi via surrogate on September 14, 2024. The pair also share son Malcolm, 3.
The couple decided to rely on the help of a surrogate to expand their family after Munn was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2023. After treating the cancer via a lymph node dissection, a nipple delay procedure and a double mastectomy, Munn told the outlet that she had an egg retrieval “window” before a hysterectomy and oophorectomy (the removal of her uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries) sent her into menopause.
“It was important to do it at that moment,” she explained, “but it was also scary because my type of cancer feeds on hormones, and there are a lot of hormone injections with IVF.”
Munn also detailed her journey finding the right surrogate, telling People that her primary goal was to find “someone who was kind.”
“I Just wanted her to be kind, and I needed her to understand that this is a path that I had to go on,” she added. “This is not a choice I would’ve made for myself.”
Munn also worried about whether it was possible to find a surrogate who would “love and take care of my daughter as much as I would,” adding that ultimately she was “so lucky to find someone so kind who we bonded with so much.”
While welcoming her daughter via surrogate made Munn fear that she wouldn’t be able to connect with her daughter, those fears quickly dissipated once she had her child in her arms.
“Méi would cry, and I was the only one who could get her to stop,” she explained. “I knew she knew me, and I knew her. She’s got this stick-straight hair that I had when I was a baby. I think because I wasn’t able to carry her, I really needed to see myself in her. I see myself in her so much.”
