From Hysterectomy to Motherhood: Lena Dunham’s Fertility Journey
Lena Dunham’s career has spanned decades and included highs like creating the iconic series Girls. She’s filled roles as a director, producer, author, and actor. Now, she’s taking on a brand-new role: at 40, Lena Dunham has become a first-time mother, welcoming a baby with her husband, Luis Felber, after a long and complicated fertility journey.
Lena Dunham has become a first-time mom
Lena Dunham announced the birth of her first baby in an essay published in Vogue on September 16. The baby, a girl, was welcomed via surrogacy. Dunham wrote that the baby arrived 13 days past her due date, on a day that coincided with both a solar eclipse and the Perseid meteor shower. She recounted sitting on a hospital bed “between the legs of a woman I hadn’t known a year ago,” waiting to meet the child she’d been anticipating for so long. She didn’t share the exact birth date, though the most recent solar eclipse took place on August 12.
Dunham married Felber, a British-Peruvian musician who performs under the name Attawalpa, in a small ceremony in London in September 2021, following a quick courtship — the two had met earlier that same year. In interviews over the past several months, she’d spoken about expanding her family in “new ways,” hinting at the surrogacy journey the couple was quietly pursuing, though they kept the details private until Dunham’s Vogue essay.
The pair have opted not to share their daughter’s name for now, and it’s unclear whether they’ll continue to keep that information private.
The ‘Girls’ star got candid about her reproductive health in 2018
Dunham and Felber’s joyous announcement follows years of reproductive struggles that Dunham has been remarkably candid about. In 2018, she underwent a hysterectomy at age 31 after years of severe, debilitating pain caused by endometriosis — a chronic condition in which uterine-lining tissue grows outside the uterus, which can be extraordinarily painful and can also limit fertility. Months later, she had her left ovary removed as well.
Dunham has described the decision and its aftermath in several interviews, noting that the surgery forced her to grieve a future she’d once assumed she would have, while also welcoming the pain relief it brought. She was clear, though, that she hadn’t given up on welcoming a baby despite the hysterectomy. In her original Vogue essay about the surgery, she wrote about the possibility of exploring whether her remaining ovary held viable eggs, and described adoption as a path she intended to pursue “with all my might.” Ultimately, she and Felber landed on surrogacy, though it’s unclear whether they plan to expand their family further in the future.
