Maria Menounos says she doesn't want to share photos of her daughter Athena's face on social media ... but she's making an exception, just this once.
To honor Athena turning three months old, the journalist and podcast host shared Instagram photos of the little girl's smiling face. Menounos and her husband Kevin Undergaro welcomed their child through surrogacy in June 2023.
"3 months old today!" Menounos, 45, wrote in her caption. "Kev and I really want to keep her little face off social BUT no one ever saw her smile because she was too little when we shot the magazine cover," referring to her July 2023 interview and cover with US Weekly.
"Anyway, while she’s still little I figure I get this one post out as she LIGHTS up our day every day and I hope she can light yours up too!" added Menounos. "We love her soooooo much we may explode!!!"
Menounos and Undergaro experienced a decade of infertility before Athena was conceived, amid multiple health crises for the journalist. Menounos had a benign brain tumor removed in 2017 and this year shared that she had surgery to remove a tumor related to a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. Menounos also lost her mother Litsa to brain cancer in 2021.
Keeping a bright outlook was one way Menounos survived her challenges, she says.
"We’re so good at catastrophizing and allowing fear to have its way with our minds,” she told TODAY.com in September 2023. “Gratitude is the greatest place to be emotionally ... so when I have a fearful moment — and I’ve had many — I will choose positive thoughts.”
On a September 18 episode of her podcast "Heal Squad," Menounos talked about sharing photos of Athena's full face on Instagram, in photos taken at 2-and-a-half months old.
"I posted for the first time so that everybody could see her face," she said. "My whole thought process ... is, I really want to protect her and so we did the cover of (Us Weekly) but you don't even see her eyes open in any of the pictures. And so, I was like, 'OK, that's it. We're just the one and done. And then that picture I posted of the three of us happened."
Menounos described the Instagram photo.
"I was like, Oh my god, she's owning us. She's in the middle with her one hand on your chin and the other one on mine. It just happened, it was perfect. And I was like, 'She literally is exploding off this picture.'"
The mom wanted her followers to see Athena's "beautiful smile."
Sharing her daughter's full face again would have to be due to "some life-changing situation where we had to share her again," Menounos added, "but I'm really going to try not to, for her sake."