‘I may have felt choiceless before, but I know I have choices now’: Lena Dunham on her plans to adoptLena Dunham may finally get her happily ever after and is considering the ‘thrilling pursuit’ of adoption after years of IVF struggles endometriosis pain and having her uterus removed.
Everyone’s journey to motherhood is different. For actress Lena Dunham, it’s been quite a difficult one. Going from unknown filmmaker to TV royalty in less than a year, the latter part of hercareer was marred by supreme uncomfort – some of that caused by the intense media attention that came with her newfound stardom, the rest due to debilitating endometriosis pain.ended, she decided to have a hysterectomy.
Despite battling endometriosis for the best part of a decade, no doctor had ever told Dunham the real reason she was suffering. They told her she had a slightly higher chance of miscarriage, but that was it. In November 2018, she checked herself into hospital and announced she wouldn’t be leaving until they stopped her pain or took her uterus.
“I have to admit I am really choosing this – I gave up on more treatment. I gave up on more pain. I gave up on more uncertainty… I made a choice that never was a choice for me, yet mourning feels like a luxury I don’t have,” she confessed. Later writing about “giving up on motherhood” yet again –the searingly honest memoir opens with the line, “the moment I lost my fertility I started searching for a baby”.
Learning that her one remaining ovary was still producing eggs, Dunham found out that, if successfully harvested, they could be fertilised with donor sperm and carried to term by a surrogate. Unfortunately, doctors were unable to fertilise any of the eggs so that option was soon ruled out too.