Maria Menounos offers an update on her family life… eight months after pancreatic cancer diagnosis and two months after welcoming her first child Athena: ‘Motherhood is going great’

After struggling with infertility for over 10 years, Maria Menounos is finally a mother, welcoming her daughter Athena in Ma, and now she’s offering a life update.

The 45-year-old TV host also announced in January she was diagnosed with Stage 2 Pancreatic, before welcoming Athena in June, via surrogate.

Menounos took to Instagram on Wednesday, sharing a snap of her in a grey t-shirt that says ‘Mother’ in the pink Barbie font, while holding the child facing away from the camera.

‘Hi friends! Motherhood is going great. Athena is an Angel. She’s currently asleep on me as we get some morning light,’ Menounos began. 

‘I’m so in love it’s crazy. Thank you to all of you for the love. I look back at the last 6 years-it’s been kinda crazy,’ she admitted, before outlining all of the heart-wrenching life updates she’s been through the past few years.

Update: Menounos took to Instagram on Wednesday, sharing a snap of her in a grey t-shirt that says ‘Mother’ in the pink Barbie font, while holding the child facing away from the camera

‘Mom gets a brain tumor, then me, two brain surgeries later, then both my parents are hospitalized with COVID, then I lost my mom, then I got diagnosed with type one diabetes, then a Neuro endocrine tumor on my pancreas…some other crazy stuff in between too,’ she added. 

Menounos added that her husband Kevin Undergaro told her, ‘I maybe roll to(o) well with the punches and I should sit back and acknowledge it all more – maybe at some point I will dig in deeper.’ 

‘Right now just that list makes me so grateful to be alive and to have thrived. To be here to enjoy this beautiful little girl,’ she continued.

‘Thank you god! Thank you st Nectarios and Panagia. I pray all of it is behind us and only great days ahead!’ she concluded.

Menounous and Undergaro had tried in vitro fertilization (IVF) multiple times in the past, as Menounos told Daily Mail in May that she was ready to give up.

She said she was, ‘fully prepared’ to never bring a biological child into the world adding, ‘I was just about to give up. I was so tired and so beaten down. It’s a financial drain and an emotional drain.’

‘If it wasn’t for [my team who] came together to help me find the surrogate in a day, I don’t know where we would be right now.

‘Sometimes it’s just not on our timing and it’s not what we can control. I will give solace to those who are in that situation where they don’t think they’re going to be able to have them,’ she added.

Crazy stuff: ‘Mom gets a brain tumor, then me, two brain surgeries later, then both my parents are hospitalized with COVID, then I lost my mom, then I got diagnosed with type one diabetes, then a Neuro endocrine tumor on my pancreas…some other crazy stuff in between too,’ she added

Dig deeper: Menounos added that her husband Kevin Undergaro told her, ‘I maybe roll to(o) well with the punches and I should sit back and acknowledge it all more – maybe at some point I will dig in deeper.

Thanks: ‘Thank you god! Thank you st Nectarios and Panagia. I pray all of it is behind us and only great days ahead!’ she concluded

Surrogate: ‘If it wasn’t for [my team who] came together to help me find the surrogate in a day, I don’t know where we would be right now

Obviously, adoption is a whole other avenue and there’s so many children that need homes… There are all all kinds of substitutes that can fill your heart as well,’ she said.

Opening up about her first month as a mother, the former E! host gushed: ‘Motherhood is amazing. It’s such an interesting, joyous, amazing experience… It’s been the most amazing month of my life. I am ecstatic.

‘I feel like it’s Christmas morning every time I get to see her and wake up with her and feed her and change her and all the things, it’s just unbelievable.’

‘We would have missed out on the greatest joy of our life… For anybody who is struggling, I would say, please hang in and do whatever it takes.