Actress and writer Lena Dunham and her husband Luis Felber have welcomed a baby daughter via surrogate. Writing in an op-ed published by Vogue on Wednesday, Dunham, 40, who is best known as the creator of hit TV series “Girls,” revealed that the couple’s first child had arrived 13 days late, before describing the moment of her birth. “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.” Dunham said she was “bashful and dizzy with joy.” In 2018, Dunham revealed that she’d had a hysterectomy in an attempt to end the pain caused by endometriosis. Endometriosis is a common and often painful condition that happens when tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus itself. It’s estimated to affect more than 11 per cent of women between the ages of 15 and 44 across the United States. The surgery removed her cervix and uterus, meaning that she was unable to conceive naturally. On meeting her surrogate, Dunham wrote in the Vogue piece: “While I’ve been known to make friends quickly — airport terminals, veterinary offices — this was the quickest leap from first coffee to gynecological procedure I’d ever done.” Dunham said in the months before the embryo transfer date, as she “got to know our surrogate and to trust her,” she thought she would feel “jealousy” towards her, but she did not. “Instead, I felt a different kind of jealousy — toward said baby, for the chance to be tucked into someone who radiated such safety. I could just tell she knew how to steer an SUV in the snow,” Dunham added. The pregnancy came after “12 years circling the fertility drain,” Dunham wrote, and revealed how she dealt with the nerves of the intervening months. “Powerless and unable to feel the physical changes that signal a growing fetus, I horrified friends and family who adhere to the Jewish superstition prohibiting anticipatory purchases, and I started shopping,” said Dunham, before recounting her journey into the world of baby fashion. “I was looking for garments that allowed her personality to develop and express itself rather than announcing an identity she didn’t yet have,” she said. “She would be a person that we helped to dress, who made an impression on the world based on our choices, until she was old enough to do it herself.”
