Writer and actor Lena Dunham, 40, has welcomed her first child with her husband, Luis Felber, via surrogacy, following years of struggles with endometriosis and fertility issues.
Dunham, who is Jewish and is best known for creating and starring in the HBO series Girls, revealed the birth of her daughter, who arrived 13 days overdue, in a Vogue op-ed published on Wednesday.
“I sat on a hospital bed, between the legs of a woman I hadn’t known a year ago… I was so focused on our surrogate – in awe at her concentration, her period of quiet followed by what sounded like a roar – I forgot to look down until I heard our baby’s cry,” she wrote.
“I saw her face, gasping just as she did. Her eyes, wide and unfocused, taking in the light and shadow, blinking rapidly.”
“‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m your mama. You… you look nothing like I thought you would, but exactly right. We’ve been waiting for you, do you know that? It was so nice of you to come’.”
Dunham described herself as “bashful and dizzy with joy”.
She has previously spoken openly about her fertility struggles. In a 2020 essay for Harper’s Magazine, she revealed that she underwent a total hysterectomy at 31 after almost two decades of chronic pain associated with endometriosis.
“The moment I lost my fertility I started searching for a baby,” she wrote.
She said motherhood had once seemed “likely but not urgent,” but that she became “keenly obsessed with it” following her surgery.
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