Lena Dunham is a mom! The Girls star, 40, welcomed her first child, a beautiful baby girl, with her husband Luis Felber. The actress and the musician, also 40, have been married since 2021.
Lena shared the news with an essay she penned for Vogue, documenting in detail her journey toward building a relationship with their surrogate, the anxiety of waiting for their baby girl's arrival, and the months she spent baby clothes shopping.
© Getty ImagesLena Dunham's surrogacy journey
"It was a mild November morning when I found myself kneeling by an exam table, fresh off a red-eye – with a rictus grin of anxious enthusiasm plastered on the lower half of my face while my eyes filled with anxious tears – clutching the hand of a woman I had met in person only twice," she wrote about being with her surrogate in the hospital for the embryo transfer.
She writes of the day they first met, for which she brought along her mother: "We sat in a coffee shop in Cobble Hill holding our matchas like props as we talked – about our lives, her children, the reasons she wanted to undertake this 'journey', as they so love to call it in fertility medicine."
Lena explained that while she wondered whether she'd feel any jealousy toward said surrogate for being able to "carry her safely in her body, use her form to feed and house her, regulate the baby's ever-evolving nervous system with steadiness, heart, and breath," she instead felt secure in knowing her baby girl would be "tucked into someone who radiated such safety."
Lena's journey shopping for baby clothes
"I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been thinking about this part," the actress wrote of shopping for baby clothes once it was confirmed their surrogate was indeed pregnant, looking back on her experience working for a children's boutique.
Much of the rest of Lena's story consisted of the dichotomy of shopping for her baby girl, which could be summed up in "clothing that was playful but didn't lead with too much wink-wink cuteness."
© Getty ImagesEventually, while in the middle of the book tour for her memoir Famesick earlier this year, she stumbled upon Rykiel Enfant, which turned out to be just what she needed. "Winsome yet goth, as if it belonged to a very petite mime with an active social life."
Lena and Luis' baby's arrival
The couple's baby actually arrived late, 13 days late to be exact. By that point, their out-of-state Airbnb was not available to stay in anymore while they resided near their surrogate, and Lena had other work commitments cropping up too.
However, 13 days later, it all shifted. "I sat on a hospital bed, between the legs of a woman I hadn't known a year ago, waiting for a glimpse of this person who I had been waiting for with something related to patience, but also none at all."
© Getty ImagesWhile she didn't reveal the baby's name or when exactly she was born, she described the feeling of it as being "bashful and dizzy with joy."
Lena's fertility struggles
The path to surrogacy was a complicated one for the actress. At the age of 31, Lena revealed in another essay with Vogue that she had decided to undergo a hysterectomy due to issues caused by endometriosis.
© InstagramShe explained during an appearance on NBC's TODAY earlier this year that it was the constant pain caused by the endometriosis that finally pushed her to get the procedure done. "What breaks my heart is there are so many people living like that because the delay to diagnosis for endometriosis averages 10 years," she added.
