{"id":773445,"date":"2026-09-17T08:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/773445\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T08:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:54:10","slug":"lena-dunham-announces-birth-of-first-baby-via-surrogacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/773445\/","title":{"rendered":"Lena Dunham announces birth of first baby via surrogacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lena Dunham, creator of the hit TV series Girls, has welcomed her first child with husband Luis Felber via a surrogate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The writer and actress announced the birth of her daughter in an op-ed published by Vogue on Wednesday, where she wrote she was &#8220;bashful and dizzy with joy&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dunham, 40, has spoken publicly about her struggles with fertility and chronic illness, and grief around her dreams of motherhood after undergoing a hysterectomy when she was 31 years old. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Of meeting her surrogate, she wrote in Vogue: &#8220;While I&#8217;ve been known to make friends quickly &#8211; airport terminals, veterinary offices &#8211; \u200bthis was the quickest leap from first coffee to gynecological procedure I&#8217;d ever done.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the op-ed, Dunham wrote about the moment she met her daughter, who she said announced herself &#8220;13 days late, in the face of a solar eclipse and a meteor shower&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I sat on a hospital bed, between the legs of a woman I hadn&#8217;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,&#8221; she wrote. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I forgot to look down until I heard our baby&#8217;s cry. I saw her face, gasping just as she did. Her eyes, wide and unfocused, taking in the light and shadow, blinking rapidly.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dunham has written extensively about her experience with endometriosis and its impact on her plans to have a family.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The moment I lost my fertility, I started searching for a baby,&#8221; she said in her memoir Famesick, which was published in April 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Detailing the gruelling process of extracting her eggs during the pandemic, Dunham said would lie on her couch &#8220;one day obsessed with adoption and another, dying to locate a surrogate &#8211; one day sure I&#8217;d be fine if I never had children, and the next convinced my life had been a waste&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Years later, in June 2025, Dunham told the Times that she and Felber were &#8220;in the process of expanding our family in new ways&#8221;, but refused to be drawn on how.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I want to safely meet our children and then figure out how to talk about it,&#8221; she told the paper.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In an earlier essay for Harper&#8217;s Magazine, in 2020, the writer said it is ironic that &#8220;knowing I cannot have a child &#8211; my ability to accept that and move on &#8211; may be the only reason I deserve to be anyone&#8217;s parent at all. I think I finally have something to teach somebody.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lena Dunham, creator of the hit TV series Girls, has welcomed her first child with husband Luis Felber&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-773445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}