Lena Dunham Shares How She Feels About Motherhood After Hysterectomy

Lena Dunham got candid about her struggle to have a biological child following her total hysterectomy.

After battling endometriosis and other chronic health problems for a decade, the "Girls" star had her uterus, cervix and one of her ovaries removed at 31 in 2018, BBC reported. Dunham shared in a new essay for Harper's magazine December 2020 issue that the surgery changed the way she looked at motherhood.

"The moment I lost my fertility I started searching for a baby," she wrote. "Before then, motherhood had seemed likely but not urgent, as inevitable as growing out of jean shorts, but in the days after my surgery, I became keenly obsessed with it.”

Dunham revealed that she had been desperate to have a child to raise as her own but failed no matter which method she tried. She said she found some sites offering adoption too Christian to want her, while others were too back-alley for her to want them.

At the time, she could barely move and couldn't handle a trip to collect a child in another country. She also didn't appreciate it when her family and friends advised her to slow down because she felt that they were being "ableist and old-fashioned."

As time went on, Dunham said her "erratic and needy" obsession went from adopting to finding a surrogate after learning that her remaining ovary was still producing eggs. She underwent an in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle, using donor sperm, and spent a lot of money on the process, but things didn't work out as she had hoped.

Dunham was told by doctors in May that five of the six of her eggs were unable to be fertilized and the sixth had chromosomal issues, meaning that all eggs had failed to fertilize.

"Instead, each step took the process further from my body, my family, my reality. Each move was more expensive, more desperate, more lonely. I stopped being able to picture the ending," she wrote of her attempts to have a child.

Dunham realized that she couldn't force her body or the universe to give her the baby she wanted. Nevertheless, she realized that her experience could be a lesson to others.

"The irony is that knowing I cannot 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. I think I finally have something to teach somebody," she concluded.

In a 2018 piece for Vogue, Dunham wrote that she never had a single doubt about having kids. In fact, she was looking forward to getting pregnant naturally, so it was painful for her that she would not be able to experience that.

"Adoption is a thrilling truth I’ll pursue with all my might. But I wanted that stomach. I wanted to know what nine months of complete togetherness could feel like,” she wrote.

"I was meant for the job, but I didn’t pass the interview," she continued. "And that’s OK. It really is. I might not believe it now, but I will soon enough. And all that will be left is my story and my scars, which are already faded enough that they’re hard to find."