Nicole Kidman finally embraces her "gestational carrier"

Feb 20, 2011, 12:17 GMT

Sydney - Hollywood actor Nicole Kidman on Sunday publicly thanked the woman who gave birth to her second child after outraging fellow Australians by dismissing the unnamed surrogate mother as merely her 'gestational carrier.'

Kidman and country-crooner husband Keith Urban last month announced they were the parents again after Faith Margaret was born December 28 to a 'gestational carrier' in the US city of Nashville, Tennessee.

'Having given birth and then ... seeing my child being born this way, the love I felt for our surrogate... she was the most wonderful woman to do this for us,' Kidman told Australia's Nine Network.

'We were in a place of desperately wanting another child and this opportunity arose for us and I couldn't get pregnant and we wanted another baby.

'I get emotional even talking about it because I'm so grateful to her,' Kidman said. 'Anyone knows the disappointment, the pain and the loss that you go through trying and struggling with fertility ... I've had a roller-coaster ride with fertility.'

Kidman and Urban, both 43, caused consternation in their homeland when they referred to the birth mother of a sister to Sunday Rose, their first child, who was born in July 2008, as a 'gestational carrier.'

Paying a woman to bear a child on their behalf would be illegal in Australia and social commentator Melinda Tankard Reist said the term 'gestational carrier' debased the role of the birth mother.

'The phrase is reminiscent of other terms popular in the global baby-production industry, such as suitcase, baby capsule, oven and incubator,' Tankard Reist said.

When she married country singer Urban in 2007, Kidman had two adopted children, daughter Isabella and son Connor, from her 10-year marriage to fellow Hollywood actor Tom Cruise.

Isabella, 19, and Connor, 16, live with Cruise and his current wife, Katie Holmes.

'It's so different because they don't live with us, but I would love them to come and live with us at some stage,' Kidman said. 'They're teenagers, they're in a whole different place.'

While she did not rule out having more children, Kidman said Urban was untroubled by having just two children.

'I think if you ask Keith would we have another baby he'd be like, 'no'. We love what we have,' she told the television station.

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