Girls creator Lena Dunham has welcomed her first child with husband musician Luis Felber via surrogate.
The 40-year-old actress and screenwriter had a hysterectomy when she was 31 because of her long-term battle with endometriosis.
Dunham said the baby was born 13 days late and detailed the process of preparing for parenthood in an essay for Vogue.
She wrote: “The waiting was harder to accept. As the clock wound down, something that was once theoretical became urgent.
“I studied the ultrasound images like a ghost hunter, looking for any signs of who she might be, of what she might already know.
“In one, I swore she was almost winking at the camera. But in the daytime, I knew it was just a bit of contrast, a trick of the light.
“In the face of a solar eclipse and a meteor shower, she announced herself.”
She went on to describe how she felt “bashful and dizzy with joy” when her baby was born.
Dunham said: “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.
“I saw her face, gasping just as she did.
“Her eyes, wide and unfocused, taking in the light and shadow, blinking rapidly.”
Dunham wrote and starred in the hit HBO series Girls, which ran for six seasons from 2012 and made stars out of the cast, including Dunham, Adam Driver and Allison Williams.
The show was controversial for its frank depiction of sex and Dunham frequently appeared nude or partially clothed in the show.
She was also behind the Netflix series Too Much about an American woman in her 30s who relocates to London and falls in love with a British musician – mirroring her life and romance to her husband, who she married in 2021.
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