Hailee Steinfeld and Josh Allen have shared the name of their baby girl: Harper Haize Allen. On Friday, June 19, Steinfeld published an intimate letter to her daughter on her Substack newsletter, Beau Society, offering the public its first real glimpse into her life as a new mother. The couple had announced Harper's birth on April 2, nearly a year after their May 2025 wedding in Santa Barbara. What followed in that letter was something far more personal than a typical celebrity birth announcement.
What did Hailee Steinfeld write to her daughter Harper?
The letter did not read like a press release. It read like a mother trying to hold onto something she knows is already slipping away. Hailee Steinfeld wrote directly to Harper, admitting the disorientation that comes with new parenthood. "You've been here for only a short while now, and somehow it feels as though you've always been ours," she wrote. "There are moments (like right now, as you sleep so soundly on my chest), I still look at you and wonder how you're real."
She wrote about time in the way new parents do, not in weeks or months but in ounces gained, naps missed, and the quiet victory of a successful transfer from arms to crib. The big, cinematic moments of motherhood, she said, were not where the real transformation lived. It was in the small, unremarkable ones. "I've learned that motherhood isn't made up of grand moments as much as the tiny, precious ones," she wrote.
There was something achingly honest about how she described missing versions of Harper that are only weeks old. "Already, I miss versions of you that still feel like yesterday," she wrote, noting the impossibly small diapers and the middle-of-the-night visits that, at the time, felt endless. Now, she is mourning them.
Josh Allen's role in the journey
Josh Allen has been beside her through all of it. "Your daddy and I look at you often and ask each other the same question: How did we get so lucky to have you?" Steinfeld wrote. It is a simple line, but within the context of everything surrounding this couple, it lands with some weight. Allen won the NFL MVP last season. Steinfeld starred in Sinners, which earned 16 Oscar nominations at the 98th Academy Awards. And yet, here they are, two people floored by a baby girl.
Days before the letter went live, Steinfeld appeared on a Substack livestream and said her only goal this summer is to be present. "This is the only summer that she will be a baby baby," she said. She understands now, she added, what every parent has said about how fast it all goes.
The letter ends with a promise: "Already, you have taught me far more than I could ever teach you."
