Lena Dunham and Husband Welcome First Child via Surrogate

Lena Dunham and her husband, Luis Felber, have welcomed their first child, a baby girl, through a surrogate. Dunham announced the birth in a Wednesday op-ed published in Vogue.

Dunham and Felber have been married since September 2021. The couple are currently in the United States and are expected to relocate to London, where Felber is from.

The announcement follows years in which Dunham has spoken publicly about serious reproductive health struggles. In 2017, at age 31, she underwent a hysterectomy due to severe endometriosis, a condition in which tissue grows outside the uterus and causes significant pain.

In 2018, she had her left ovary removed. In an essay at the time, Dunham described the ovary as “encased in scar tissue and fibrosis, attached to my bowel and pressing on nerves that made it kinda hard to walk/pee/vamp.” She wrote that “over the last month it got worse and worse until I was simply a burrito shaped like a human.”

Last summer, Dunham told The Times that she and Felber were in the process of “expanding” their family. She described her hysterectomy as “a grief but it was also a relief,” explaining that she had expected to experience her fertility and cycle gradually ending rather than losing that possibility abruptly.

“I thought I would have the opportunity to experience my fertility and my cycle waning and it never was. Instead it was a very quick, sharp cut-off… I will say we’re in the process of expanding our family in new ways. I want to safely meet our children and then figure out how to talk about it.”

In April, Dunham spoke on “Today with Jenna and Sheinelle” about grieving the possibility that she might never become a mother after her surgery.

“In the moment, my pain was so overriding that I put those other thoughts aside, and it was only in the aftermath of the surgery that I started to feel the weight of what had happened. Some people don’t dream about being mothers, but I had, and it was a big part of my identity that I was going to do it someday in that way.”

Dunham said that since her surgery she has “met so many people who built their families in so many different ways,” which helped her reach a point where she felt “really excited” about becoming a parent through a different path. “Whatever way it happens, I will feel so grateful,” she said.