Lena Dunham Becomes a Mom 8 Years After Hysterectomy
Lena Dunham has come home with her first child via surrogate. The 40-year-old author of the hit show Girls and her husband Luis Felber shared their joy on Wednesday by revealing that they have been blessed with a baby girl in an op-ed published by Vogue that morning.
Dunham opened her heart and shared her conversation with the baby that brought tears of joy to her eyes: ‘Hi, I’m your mother, you look nothing like my imagination did, but exactly as you should. We were missing you, you know? It was just amazing that you decided to come.’
The actress further confessed, ‘I didn’t mean a word literally. Like the poor kid who was really wondering if schoolmates would attend a birthday party, I was just a bundle of nerves and at the same time very pleased. ‘Dunham hadn’t really been very vocal about her wish to be a parent after undergoing a hysterectomy in 2018. Dunham and Felber, a British musician 40 years of age, got married in London in 2021 after having dated for a short time.
Lena Says She Didn’t Feel Jealous About Using a Surrogate After Hysterectomy
Lena Dunham reflected on surrogacy as her way of becoming a mother. Taylor Swift’s BFF continued that “I felt another kind of jealousy, for the baby, for being carried by someone who was a very safe and secure environment. It was obvious to me that she knew how to drive an SUV even in snow.”
In fact, Dunham had revealed via The Sunday Times in June 2025 that, together with her husband, Felber, they were trying to make their family bigger, as she put it: “My hysterectomy brought grief, but it also brought relief.” ‘I assumed my fertility would slowly decline and I’d feel sad that I couldn’t reproduce, but that never happened. My ability to reproduce was suddenly and painlessly terminated.’
‘I can tell you that we are going to have our family the same way we did before; only we’re going to do it differently this time,’ she said. However, she refused to elaborate and just gave a hint: ‘I would like to present to you our children in person and then maybe talk about it.’
Dunham tied the knot with Peruvian-British Felber at an intimate London wedding ceremony on 6 September 2021.
How Lena Met Luis Felber: 8-Hour Blind Date in Lockdown
Felber had, before that, described how they were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend and that their conversation just kept going so well at their first meeting that they ‘didn’t stop talking for eight hours.’
Because the couple met during the pandemic, they had to settle on a riverside stroll as their first date when the pubs were completely shut. Lena only mentioned Felber was her boyfriend during the New York Times interview that she had in April 2021.
Felicity Felber is definitely someone who knows her way with words. ‘I have been with him for a few months only. Yet I feel pretty blessed,’ she added. The procedure involved the removal of Dunham’s organs, such as the uterus, fallopian tubes, cervix, and possibly part of the ovaries.
Dunham, in March 2018, told Vogue that the decision of hers came after ‘years of a series of complicated operations totaling in double digits’ and also the attempts at getting help with other treatments like ‘pelvic floor therapy, massage therapy, pain therapy, color therapy, acupuncture, and yoga.’
Lena Dunham’s Health Before Surrogacy: ‘My Uterus Was Shaped Like a Heart’
When the doctor checked her, he found some other reasons for her pain besides endometriosis, the disease of the lining of her womb. She has retrograde menstruation, also known as my monthly period running backwards, hence filling my stomach with blood.
Also, she writes, ‘My ovary is pressed up onto the muscles surrounding the sacral nerves in my back, responsible for the ability of the human race to walk. ‘We don’t even need to talk about my uterine lining.’
Dunham was quoted as saying that she was still interested in looking to other options for starting a family, as she put it, ‘I felt forced to make no choice at one point, but now I know that I have my choices.’
Lena used to date Jack Antonoff, a musician from Fun and Bleachers, before they broke up and she had her hysterectomy. They dated five years between 2012 and 2017 before parting ways, which was a ‘very harmonized’ split they said.
