Menounos said she she was met with some surprising reactions after her decision to use a surrogate to have her daughter, Athena — and they weren’t from who you’d think!
Welcoming a child should be a happy moment, but when Maria Menounos decided to have a child via surrogate, she was met with some surprising reactions.
“They were friends. One of them worked for me for a while,” Menounos revealed during Monday’s episode of Sasha Pieterse’s Women in the Nude podcast, saying they shamed her for going the surrogacy route.
“This is somebody who was, like, so sweet and I, like, loved,” she explained. “She said to my husband, ‘What do you mean she can’t carry? Like, that doesn’t make any sense.'”
“And he goes, ‘Her neurosurgeon — the top neurosurgeon in the world — said she can’t carry.’ And she was like, ‘I just don’t get it. It just doesn’t make any sense,” Menounos continued.
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Following that exchange, the 49-year-old TV personality said she cut ties with her friend.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t ever want to talk to you again,'” She recalled. “It’s one thing to be judged by outside people who don’t know and don’t get it. But you actually know me, and you know what we’ve gone through. For you to even say anything so judgmental is just crazy to me.”
The former E! News anchor had faced infertility issues that led to IVF treatments, which were halted when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2017. While tumor was ultimately removed and she was given a clean bill of health, her neurosurgeon advised her against carrying a child.
When Menounos and husband Keven Undergaro’s first surrogate fell through in 2020, she had nearly given up home — but the pair announced in February 2023 that they’d found another and were expecting a baby. They went on to welcome their daughter, Athena, in June 2023.
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Maria Menounos Welcomes Daughter Athena Via Surrogate
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“Athena is our miracle baby,” gushed in an interview with Us Weekly shortly after her daughter’s birth. “I’m so grateful for her.”
Touching on the impact Athena has had on her life, Menounos told the outlet, “It’s been the greatest gift. I think the first thing that I felt after she was born is that I finally knew where I belonged. And that was a really incredible feeling. I didn’t feel like I was chasing after anything anymore. And she’s just magic. And I just love every second of it. She’s just brought so much joy to all of us, and I’m so grateful.”
And Menounos is ready to welcome another, telling US “it would be a dream.”
“We’ve already discussed that we wanted to. The second she was born, I’m like, ‘I want more, I need more,'” she said. “And then we were kind of like, ‘Well, let’s wait ’till she’s old enough so that transition feels good for her.’ So she doesn’t feel like a loss; she feels like a gain and that she’s got a new role. So that’s kind of what we’re thinking.”
