E! News was the first to report the birth, which apparently took place on Friday 15 December. 

The 38-year-old actress didn’t talk about her pregnancy until August when she told Sunday TODAY how excited she was to become a mother: “It’s so unknown to me. I have a lot of control over a lot of aspects of my life, and this is one where I’m like, ‘OK, it’s out of my hands,’ which is kind of a fun feeling”. 

Oprah Winfrey had already inadvertently spilled the beans about Kaling’s pregnancy to People the month before – a mishap the actress handled well. Mindy told Ellen DeGeneres in October: “If anyone is going to announce big news about your private life, Oprah Winfrey is the person. You can’t complain that much about it. And you also can’t be like, ‘Hey, Oprah, zip it’ — because she’s almost like a religious figure. So if there’s one person I have to tell my daughter about that revealed her existence to the world, Oprah is pretty good.” In the same interview, she revealed she was having a girl.

Kaling has not revealed the identity of the baby’s father, but told NBC’s Willie Geist that she hoped to draw parenting inspiration from her own mother, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2012 – “My mom was incredibly fierce and so devoted to us, just loved us and really wanted us to be happy no matter what we did. My career choice was not something that she was familiar with and she was just so supportive of that,” she said. “If I could give that to my child, just that open-mindedness, I’d be so happy.”

Kaling is likely to be incredibly busy promoting A Wrinkle in Time and Oceans 8 (and she has committed to producing two further comedy projects) – and while, thus far, she’s kept fairly schtum about becoming a mother, it’s worth keeping one eye on her Instagram account for pictures of baby Katherine. 

Image: Rex Features