Olivia Munn Shares Her Mixed Feelings About Surrogacy in an Emotional New Interview: ‘I Don’t Have the Ability To Carry a Baby Anymore’
When Olivia Munn was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in May 2023, she had a lot of health decisions to make. Not least of which: whether she wanted another baby. In an emotional new interview, the Newsroom alum opened up about her fertility journey and her complicated feelings about surrogacy.
In a cover story for Vogue, Munn revealed that she recently opted for a complete hysterectomy and oophorectomy to remove the uterus and ovaries and further reduce her chances of cancer recurrence (she previously had revealed that she underwent a double mastectomy last year). She also froze her eggs so that she could have another baby with boyfriend John Mulaney via surrogate if she wanted (they are already parents to 2-year-old son Malcolm). Munn told the outlet that her and Mulaney “don’t feel like we’re done growing our family.” And even though she’s grateful for the opportunity to use a surrogate in the future, Munn still has mixed emotions.
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“When you’re pregnant with your own baby, it’s like teamwork — you and the baby working together to make their little life come true,” the 43-year-old said. “You’re doing all this work to eat well, try to not have anxiety, just do all the right things during the pregnancy. With a surrogate, you have to try to go find a version of yourself somewhere out in the world. Somebody that you trust as much as yourself to live their life as a pregnant woman the same way that you would.”
There’s nobody who is truly exactly like you, so it’s hard! However, for Munn and many other families with health issues or who can’t get pregnant, using a surrogate is an excellent choice. “But a surrogate isn’t a scary prospect to me anymore because there’s nothing I can do. I don’t have the ability to carry a baby anymore, so if we want to build our family, this is our option,” Munn continued. “This journey has made me realize how grateful I am to have options for not only fighting cancer, but also having more children if we want, because I know a lot of people don’t have those options.”
Munn isn’t the only one whose struggled with a surrogacy pregnancy. Khloé Kardashian recently shared how she felt “detached” while she was expecting her son Tatum, 22 months, via surrogate.
“The entire pregnancy of my surrogate, I admittedly buried my head in the sand and I said to Dr. A., ‘I can’t do this,’” The Kardashians star said on a May appearance of SHE MD podcast with Mary Alice Haney and board-certified OB-GYN Dr. Thais Aliabadi, who is Kardashian’s doctor. “And the whole surrogacy pregnancy, I was really detached …. So I didn’t get to really attach during the pregnancy part.”
She said she had “one of the world’s best surrogates,” but she still struggled. “I wasn’t at a ton of the doctor’s appointments while my surrogate was pregnant to protect her privacy, I didn’t want paparazzi finding out … I would always be on FaceTime, but it’s not the same and it’s not being there … for Tatum,” the Good American founder said. “When Dr. A put him on my chest to do skin to skin [right after he was born], my face that we filmed for Kardashians, and my face, looking back now, it’s like I was a deer in headlights. I was so scared.”
And although things with Tatum are great now, that doesn’t diminish her experience during the surrogate pregnancy. Like Kardashian, Munn has plenty of support. She also has a strong spirit.
In an interview with PEOPLE last month, the Hit-Monkey star revealed that she is staying strong amid her health battles. “You realize cancer doesn’t care who you are; it doesn’t care if you have a baby or if you don’t have time,” she told the outlet. “It comes at you, and you have no choice but to face it head-on.”
With this attitude, Munn is going to do just fine.
Before you go, check out these celebrity parents who welcomed their babies via surrogate.
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