Now, when someone says “Lena Dunham is mother” they can mean it in the metaphorical slang sense or in the literal sense.
In an essay in Vogue today, the Jewish “Girls” writer announced that she and her husband Luis Felber have welcomed a baby girl via surrogacy. The article does not tell readers when the child was born or what her name is. (For the record, our guess is Dorothy, Dottie or Dot after Lena’s late Jewish grandmother.) It delves more into how Lena quelled the unique anxiety of having a baby via surrogate by eschewing all Jewish superstition and shopping for her baby’s wardrobe.
Still, Lena gives a peek into the moment she met her daughter for the first time:
“And then, 13 days late, in the face of a solar eclipse and a meteor shower, she announced herself. 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 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. I saw her face, gasping just as she did. Her eyes, wide and unfocused, taking in the light and shadow, blinking rapidly.”
She goes on: “‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m your mama. You… you look nothing like I thought you would, but exactly right. We’ve been waiting for you, do you know that? It was so nice of you to come.’”
Awwww!
Fertility and motherhood are topics not foreign to Lena. Over the past 12 years, she has written extensively about her chronic endometriosis, which resulted in her getting a hysterectomy at 31 years old, attempts at IVF and her desire to have children. “I wanted to know what nine months of complete togetherness could feel like. I was meant for the job, but I didn’t pass the interview. And that’s OK. It really is,” she wrote in February 2018.
“The irony is that knowing I cannot [biologically] have a child — my ability to accept that and move on — may be the only reason I deserve to be anyone’s parent at all,” Lena wrote more recently in her memoir “Famesick.” “I think I finally have something to teach somebody.”
Mazel tov, Lena and Luis!!
New Year, More Kveller. A few dollars keeps Kveller joyfully, honestly free.
