t's a girl! Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban welcome a surprise second child via surrogate

t's a girl! Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban welcome a surprise second child via surrogate

By Baz Bamigboye and Sara Nathan
Last updated at 11:17 PM on 17th January 2011

Nicole Kidman had a baby girl last month via a surrogate mother, it has emerged.

The 43-year-old Oscar winner and her husband, country singer Keith Urban, already have a two-year-old daughter called Sunday Rose.

On Monday, they proudly announced the arrival of another little girl, Faith Margaret Kidman Urban, who was born near the couple’s Nashville home at the Centennial Women’s Hospital on December 28.

Parents again: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban welcomed a second child via surrogate three weeks ago

Although the baby was carried by a surrogate, Miss Kidman and Urban are her biological parents.

Miss Kidman released a statement yesterday saying: ‘Our family is truly blessed and just so thankful to have been given the gift of baby Faith Margaret.

‘No words can adequately convey the incredible gratitude that we feel for everyone who was so supportive throughout this process, in particular our gestational carrier.’

They said they chose Faith as their new baby’s first name because that’s what they needed to get through the process of their daughter being born.

Is that a baby photo? The couple were spotted giggling over something on Urban's phone at the Critics Choice Movie Awards in Los Angeles on Friday night

’We needed lots of faith, literally’, Nicole explained.

And Margaret was chosen as a tribute to Nicole’s grandmother who gave birth to her last child at age 49.

’As an older mother I wanted to pay tribute to her ,’ she said.

The new parents rented the top floor of the hospital to make sure they had privacy for their baby’s birth and were last seen visiting her last week. However, she is now believed to be at home with them.

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Miss Kidman also has two adopted teenage children, Isabella, 18, and Conor, 15, with her ex-husband Tom Cruise.

Last month she told an interviewer how they had decided to live with their father - and did not call her ‘mum’.

Heading home to meet Faith: Kidman, Urban and their daughter Sunday flew from Sydney back to the U.S. just few days before the birth

At the Golden Globe awards on Sunday night, where she was nominated as Best Actress for her role as a bereaved mother in the film Rabbit Hole, she told the Mail she planned to take a six-month break from work to devote time to her growing family.

‘I’m going to take a long break, a complete break away from work to concentrate totally on all things relating to the family. It’s a clear six months off,’ she said.

Miss Kidman is the latest in a long line of celebrities to have a baby via surrogacy. Sex And The City star Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband Matthew Broderick had twin girls by a surrogate.

Miss Kidman won an Oscar in 2003 for her role as Virginia Woolf in The Hours but said she was enjoying the awards circuit much more this time around.

‘The last time I was in an awards season I wasn’t able to enjoy it so much. I was on my own at that point and I was a bit tense but now all is calm.’

Long-distance parenting: Kidman has two adopted children Isabella and Connor from her first marriage to Tom Cruise

Miss Kidman and New Zealand-born Urban married in 2006 after a year-long courtship. 

Kidman was previously married to Tom Cruise and they adopted two children together: Isabella Jane, 19, and Connor Anthony, 15.

The actress revealed in 2007 that she had a miscarriage very early on in her first marriage, and also had a second miscarriage when three months pregnant just before they split in 2000.

'From the minute Tom and I were married, I wanted to have babies,' she told Vanity Fair in 2007. 'And we lost a baby early on, so that was really very traumatic. And that's when we would adopt [daughter] Bella.'

Cruise filed for divorce in February 2001, citing irreconcilable differences. The reasons for dissolution have never been made public.

Kidman's baby joy comes just a month after her younger sister, TV presenter Antonia Kidman, gave birth to her fifth child, a son called Nicholas, in Singapore on December 11.

Nicholas is the first son for Antonia and her new husband Craig Marran. She also has four older children Lucia, 11; Hamish, nine; James, seven; and Sybella, three, from her first marriage to Angus Hawley.