Olivia Munn knows that in the end it worked out exactly as it should.
Although while the actress, 44, was waiting for the arrival of her second child, daughter Méi, now 8 months, via surrogate, she wasn’t sure she felt totally connected.
Munn, who also shares son Malcom, 3, with husband John Mulaney told People in an interview published Saturday, that waiting for Méi to be born “was the first time I was like, ‘Oh wait, is this what it’s like to be an expectant dad?’”
“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,’ ” she explained. “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.”
This time around, Munn and Mulaney, 42, opted for a surrogate after the “Buddy Games” alum underwent a double mastectomy and hysterectomy following her breast cancer diagnosis.
“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,’” Munn continued. “I felt like an expectant father.”
“It was important to do it at that moment, but it was also scary because my type of cancer feeds on hormones, and there are a lot of hormone injections with IVF,” the “Your Friends & Neighbors” star said about deciding to do an egg retrieval before her cancer surgeries.
After the procedure, Munn shared she was able to retrieve seven eggs, with two of the embryos being “strong enough to be tested for abnormalities and the gender.”
“I remember I was on a walk with John, and I said, ‘I really don’t think that I’ll be okay unless we get two girl embryos. I know this puts me at risk, but I just need you to support me,’ ” Munn recounted. “He said, ‘Whatever you need.’ “
The Hollywood vet’s doctor then called and confirmed she had two healthy female embryos.
As Munn put it, “that was a sign for me everything was going to be okay.”
And when it came to choosing a surrogate to carry their daughter, one thing in particular mattered most: “The number one thing that I wanted in a surrogate was someone who was kind.”
She added, “I just wanted her to be kind, and I needed her to understand that this is a path that I had to go on. This is not a choice I would’ve made for myself.”
“The first thing I worried about was if I would be able to find somebody who would love and take care of my daughter as much as I would,” Munn went on. “We were so lucky to find someone so kind who we bonded with so much.”
Despite finding someone they trusted, “The Daily Show” alum “had a concern of ‘Will my daughter know me?’ “
Once their little one arrived, all worries washed away for the mom-of-two.
“Méi would cry, and I was the only one who could get her to stop,” she said. “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.”
Looking at where her life is now, two years after receiving a life altering cancer diagnosis, Munn gushed: “It’s so crazy to think that I’m sitting here with two amazing babies. I’m just so happy and grateful, and I’m really proud of what I’ve been able to do. I didn’t know how much strength I had inside me.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the “Attack of the Show!” vet admitted that she and her other half might not be entirely done having kids. The pair still have one viable frozen female embryo.
“Two [kids] is a lot,” she told the outlet. “We’re still talking if we are done growing our family.”
In May, Mulaney took a moment to praise his wife of almost a year.
The comedian said while on the SiriusXM podcast, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” “I always look back on her the when she was diagnosed in April [2023], through that whole year and go, ‘She wasn’t just courageous, but she was also so fun … like, we had so much fun.’ ”
“It’s weird; I go through iPhone photos and I go, ‘Oh that’s you, me, and Malcolm in the backyard with the kiddie pool when he decided to just pour so many pebbles into the storm drain and clog it up and whatever it was,’ and … that was 3 weeks after your lymph node dissection.”
Mulaney noted that “it wasn’t just the courage of it. She also was just giving us — it’s always just her greatest best self throughout it.”
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