Lena Dunham welcomes 1st baby with husband Luis Felber via surrogate
Lena Dunham has entered her mom era.
The actress and writer revealed in an essay for Vogue that she and her husband, Luis Felber, welcomed a baby girl via surrogate.
Dunham detailed her journey to motherhood, from the embryo transfer, which happened in November, and her relationship with her surrogate.
She wrote, "In the months before the embryo transfer date, as I got to know our surrogate and to trust her, the feelings I thought would be there somehow weren't: namely jealousy, that this woman could do for a child -- for my child -- what I could not."
"Carry her safely in her body, use form to feed and house her, regulate the baby's ever-evolving nervous system with steadiness, heart, and breath," she continued. "Instead, I felt a different kind of jealousy -- toward said baby, for the chance to be tucked into someone who radiated such safety."
The "Girls" star then went into how she prepared for the arrival of her baby girl and the moment she met her for the first time.
In November 2020, Dunham penned an essay for Harper's Magazine and revealed that after having her uterus, cervix and one ovary removed due to chronic pain caused by endometriosis, she learned that her remaining ovary was still producing eggs.
At that point, she stated, she underwent an in vitro fertilization cycle, using donor sperm, only to learn that none of her six embryos were viable. Although her doctor told her at that time that they could "discuss my 'remaining options,'" she added, "He knew that I knew that there weren't really any."
Despite the health challenges she faced, she said that she would not give up on becoming a mother.
"There is a lot you can correct in life—you can end a relationship, get sober, get serious, say sorry—but you can't force the universe to give you a baby that your body has told you all along was an impossibility," she wrote.
She added, "The irony is that knowing I cannot have a child—my ability to accept that and move on—may be the only reason I deserve to be anyone's parent at all. I think I finally have something to teach somebody."
Dunham and Felber tied the knot on Sept. 25, 2021.
