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.

Mindy Kaling has just announced the name of her baby girl