Mindy Kaling Gives Birth! Why She Was Always Destined for Motherhood

The Mindy Project star has talked openly about wanting kids for years

By Meg Swertlow Dec 20, 2017 1:34 AMTags

It was written in the stars...

On Tuesday, E! News exclusively learned that Mindy Kaling welcomed her first child, a baby girl named Katherine Kaling, on Dec. 15.

Back in July, E! News broke the news that the Mindy Project star was pregnant with her first child and that it was "an unexpected surprise." 

In September, she broke her silence about her pregnancy, saying on NBC's Today show that she was "really excited" to become a mom.

"I'd like to be the fun mom, I know I'm gonna be the dorky mom," she added. "So if I can be kind of fun too, I think that would be nice."

Kaling, who is notoriously private, has not revealed the identity of her baby's father, but has definitely given fans major clues over the years that being a mom was a big priority.

Check out the funny lady's sincere quotes about wanting to start a family...

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Mindy Kaling's Best Looks
Power of a Good Parent

"I would say that my mother is the single biggest role model in my life, but that term doesn't seem to encompass enough when I use it about her," Mindy previously told Rolling Stone in 2013. "She was the love of my life."

Philosophy on Having Children

"I think I've decided that unlike everything else in my life, I'm going to be fast and loose about kids. I'm going to not actively plan, but if it happens, it would happen," Mindy shared with Yahoo! Style in a candid interview back in Sept. 2015. "I'm not cavalier about who I would have a kid with. But the thing I ask every parent that I really admire, the one comment they all have is that they wish they had kids earlier."

Advice for Growing Kids

"I just want ambitious teenagers to know it is totally fine to be quiet, observant kids," Mindy once explained her book. "Besides being a delight to your parents, you will find you have plenty of time later to catch up."

Thoughts on Getting Married

"I admire [a good marriage] when I see it. I think it's a beautiful thing," the actress revealed to Yahoo! Style. "In my 20s, and especially in my teens, I completely fetishized a wedding. But I think much less about marriage now. It's less interesting to me."

Advice for Teenage Girls

"Teenage girls, please don't worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete," Mindy wrote in her book Why Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). "Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I've noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also a big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it's so wonderfully fair."

The Importance of Family Time

When you become older, Mindy realized that spending time with your entire family gets a whole lot harder. "Later, when you're grown up, you realize you never really get to hang out with your family," she wrote in her book. "You pretty much have only eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that's it."

Advice to Young Women Trying to Be Confident

"While I want to encourage women to be very confident, I think you can be quietly confident," Mindy once explained to BuzzFeed when answering viewer questions. "If you're just like, 'R-E-S-P-E-C-T' around everyone, that's very unbecoming. Quiet confidence is the thing we need to be telling girls about, not shout-it-from-the-rooftops confidence, and that's how I think you can really succeed."

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