Dear Girls

by Ali Wong

  Some women want to maintain mystique by making sure that the husband doesn’t look beyond the curtain. Well, your daddy looked anyway. He saw my spleen, my intestines, and all the other guts down there that I’m not educated enough to identify. And I’m glad he saw them. Because now he knows that he owes me forever. Also, it’s very hard to divorce somebody once you know what their spleen looks like. It doesn’t get much more intimate than that. I regularly pull the “C-section card” whenever I want to get out of a household chore. If he asks me to unload the dishwasher, I just say, “Sure, I’ll do that when you’ve gone through this.” And then I make a slicing motion below his belly button while screaming aggressive karate noises, and he’ll immediately start putting away the clean plates and utensils. The C-section was an odd blessing in mandating more shared parenting responsibility. I didn’t change a single diaper for the two weeks Daddy was on paternity leave since I could barely walk. In the two months following Mari’s birth, my incision got infected twice, and my ob-gyn mandated that I rest more. Daddy had no choice but to get up with me in the middle of the night when I had to feed the baby. Unlike some fathers, he had to soothe Mari and swaddle her and get to know her and be a parent.

  Mari was a great distraction from the C-section recovery, and I experienced no pain. I was also taking a lot of Vicodin. On further analysis, it was likely more due to the Vicodin. At first I felt guilty about taking it while breastfeeding but then I talked to my pharmacist friend Aileen, who had just had a C-section with twins a month earlier. Her response to my questions about the safety of it was: “You have suffered enough.” That became my mantra for motherhood from there on out.

  You have suffered enough.

  If you can make it easier, make it easier, and don’t feel guilty about it.

  Plus I think the Vicodin helped Mari sleep better.

  Then I did it all again with Nikki but it was better because I knew what to expect. Also the anesthesiologist for Nikki was so much more nurturing and got my spine on the first try because she paid attention in medical school. Maybe looking her in the eye before the surgery and telling her, “If you miss my fucking spine I will write all about how you missed my fucking spine in my upcoming book Dear Girls” helped as well.

  My dream of having four children was replaced by utter gratitude that I was able to get pregnant three times, and give birth to two beautiful girls, who exhaust me spiritually, financially, and emotionally.

  I came to see that everything really does happen for a reason. If I hadn’t had that miscarriage, you, my dear Mari, never would’ve been born. And as I write this letter, Nikki is sleeping in her swing chair, one month old. I am wearing a diaper because I still have afterbirth leaking out of my pussy. My breasts are veiny and engorged with milk, my shirt has baby-shit stains, and I am so tired that I feel like I’ve been swimming in the ocean for twenty days straight.

  But it’s worth it.

  (Mostly.)

  CHAPTER 3

  Tips on Giving Birth

  Dear Girls,

  Here are a few quick tips on the hospital stay, when and if you give birth:

  Bring Depends for yourself. It made all the difference the second time around. You don’t want to be stuck with that hospital mega-pad that is constantly slipping and sliding in that mesh underwear. What you want is a nice flesh-tone adult diaper, with a pad built in to the underwear. No adhesive needed! Like one of those awesome push-up bras where the chicken cutlets are just sewn into the bra!

  Bring a breastfeeding pillow. The first time around, I had to stack up tiny hospital pillows underneath my forearms to provide support. It was a very un-ergonomic assault on my back and shoulders. I brought wrist guards the second time around as well. I looked like a member of the Cobra Kai, but it was worth it. Also, everyone kept asking me if I had carpal tunnel, and I was like, Bitch, I’m doing this because I don’t want carpal tunnel.

  Don’t get tricked into paying for the bigger birthing suite that’s three hundred dollars more per night. I liked being in a small room, where the bed was close to the bathroom. After you give birth you’re very constipated so they put you on milk of magnesia and stool softeners that make you have wild diarrhea, and you want to be as close to the bathroom as possible so you don’t shit your pants. The downside is that when you have visitors and need to blow it up in the bathroom, they’ll hear you blowing it up in the bathroom. But you shouldn’t be inviting people to meet the new baby right away if you’re not comfortable with them seeing your boobs or listening to your volcanic asshole.

  Bring a nice blanket, something soft and cozy that feels like the inside of an Ugg boot or a Care Bear’s vagina. Hospital bedding does not spark joy. The sheets have a thread count of three and there’s always some sort of plastic lining underneath to protect the mattress from all the new moms leaking juice everywhere. It made me feel like a patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. If you haven’t seen that movie, turn off the phone in your eyeball (or whatever technology you have now) and watch it. It’s way stressful but amazing!

  Bring DVDs or an HDMI cable for your laptop. It was really fun for me and Daddy to watch movies in the hospital, and it made the whole experience feel more like a vacation. A vacation where your body explodes, but still, you’re not at the office. And newborns are great but they’re not that exciting after a while (ten minutes), especially when they’re attached to your boob and you can’t use your hands at all. Do not bring any books though. You will have zero brain cells for reading, pretty much ever again.

  Pack lots of snacks. Your favorite snacks. Hospital food is a funeral of flavor in your mouth. They just steam sliced carrots and white chicken breasts and then shove a little cup of red Jell-O at you and expect you to be happy. Which you should be, because that bland-ass food means the hospital is doing its job. They’re putting all of their energy into keeping people alive while not getting sued. If a hospital has great food it’s probably a terrible hospital. Good food takes a lot of focus, and I would rather that focus was on me and my erupting body, and not on whether fava beans make a good side dish for dry-rubbed cumin lamb.

  Bring a cute-ass onesie for the baby. It will make you love the baby more (which is very important when they need to clamp onto your breast like titty-milk Dracula every two hours). I also really like those long-sleeved kimono tops with hand covers. Babies are often born with fingernails so disturbingly long it made me wonder why nobody told me there had been a raccoon living inside my uterus.

  Get a bunch of the gel nipple Soothies that are free. Those are the most expensive free item at the hospital. They’re the hospital equivalent of the big turkey from Supermarket Sweep. In fact, just steal everything from the hospital. I filled my bag with those tiny formula bottles even though I was pumping like a cow. I thought they’d come in handy for Daddy in case I happened to die from the pain and suffering of breastfeeding.

  Take advantage of the in-house lactation consultant. Get that woman to watch you and correct you, because when you go home, it costs two hundred dollars to have that same exact Stevie Nicks voodoo lady come to your house and beat your engorged breast like a tambourine.

  Take advantage of the nursery. Nurses can take care of the baby for up to three hours so you can get some sleep. Don’t worry about bonding with the baby, you’ll have the rest of your life to do that. Also, the baby literally can’t even see. Stick that baby in the nursery, drift off, and thank me later.

  Require all visitors to bring food from your favorite places that don’t deliver. Eat sushi and deli meat, you deserve it after having been deprived of it for so long. Hell, eat food out of the trash, if you want! You are finally free to get an out-of-control listeria infection!

  Get a blowout the day before you give birth. Once that baby comes out, sneaking in a shower where you can wash your hair is practically impossible. Plus a blowout is nice for pictures. A pedicure is also cru
cial before cuticle skin slowly takes over your toenails for the next three years.

  Make the nurses teach your partner how to change all the diapers and bathe the baby. Remember your new mantra: You have suffered enough. You don’t need to be changing, wiping, or teaching for a while.

  Bring zip-up or Velcro swaddles to the hospital. Fuck learning how to swaddle by folding and tucking a blanket. It’s not the Middle Ages. You don’t need to be doing origami in the hospital.

  I know this list is a lot about stealing from and taking maximum advantage of the hospital but trust me, when you go home with your partner after giving birth and realize you’re all on your own, you’ll thank me. Once you leave the hospital, you cannot, and hopefully will not ever, return to that mythical village of nurturing and knowledgeable women helping you squeeze water through a cheap sports bottle onto your vagina because you don’t have the energy to take a shower.

  CHAPTER 4

  Why I Went Back to Work

  Dear Girls,

  I wanted to share with you my thoughts on being a stay-at-home mom versus a working mom. Whatever path you choose, if you have children, will be the right one for you, and you don’t have to commit to being either forever. I had fantasized my whole life of being a stay-at-home mom. It was my plan, my goal, my be-all-end-all. I wanted my day-to-day schedule to look like this:

  Nine A.M.: Wake up and meditate.

  Nine-thirty A.M.: Make and consume superfood smoothie.

  Ten A.M.: SoulCycle.

  Eleven A.M.: Brunch with a hypothetical black girlfriend, hypothetical Latina girlfriend, and hypothetical lesbian girlfriend (she can be whatever race she wants but she must look like a lesbian so that she is distinguishable from the rest of us) at a restaurant where they charge six dollars extra for an egg-whites-only omelet. We discuss bathroom remodeling, share our contractors’ contact information, praise succulents for their drought tolerance, and leave a giant tip.

  Two P.M.: Attend a board meeting for a foundation that gives money to organizations that build yoga studios in the hood.

  Two-thirty P.M.: Nap.

  Three-thirty P.M.: Meditate.

  Four-thirty P.M.: Read one of Liane Moriarty’s juicy novels.

  Five P.M.: Gather herbs and chilies in the garden for dinner.

  Six P.M.: Make dinner for Daddy.

  Eight P.M.: Watch the latest HBO show that consists of maximum violence, nudity, and larger cultural conversation buzz factor.

  Nine P.M.: Make love to Daddy and sleep extremely peacefully.

  None of those are jokes. That’s actually what I was picturing in my head. But I found out that true stay-at-home moms don’t get to do any of the wonderful shit on my dream itinerary. Like, literally zero of those things. Because they have to be moms to their kids, which, strangely, I did not account for. That dream itinerary didn’t even account for putting the kids to bed. I followed too many celebrities like Jessica Seinfeld on Instagram, which gave me an extremely inaccurate depiction of the stay-at-home-mom life.

  I am obsessed with Jessica Seinfeld’s Instagram feed. Nothing makes me more jealous, or allows me to escape the current, awful political nightmare, than her beautiful, seemingly easy life. It’s 30 percent cats in bow ties, 50 percent pasta dishes she probably took two bites of, 20 percent monogrammed pillows, and 100 percent white. It is unapologetically white. God, I love it so much. Lots of time spent near water, lots of Michael Kors resort tunics, and tons of artisanal baked goods. And, though I don’t really know for sure, I feel it’s safe to assume she never cleans up any of the baking mess. Or any mess, really. I’d bet the only sponge she’s ever seen is filled with Chantilly cream and sprinkled with edible flowers. She inserts the perfect amount of Jerry Seinfeld because I think she needs to make it clear that she’s not defined by her marriage to Jerry Seinfeld while simultaneously making it clear that she’s married to Jerry Seinfeld. And let’s also mention that she doesn’t have to post any of these salads or excursions to the Hamptons, because she’s the wife of Jerry Seinfeld. All of this lifestyle blogging and posting is a choice, a hobby. There are no consequences if she doesn’t take a picture of that fruit tart or share her thoughts on the best ballet flats. Her only real job is to not embarrass Jerry. And she’s very good at this job because unless she were to embroider a swastika onto one of her pillows, or make cookies out of old people, everything she does is as inoffensive as one of her husband’s jokes about missing socks.

  Jessica Seinfeld is not a trophy wife. She is a professional socialite. A socialite is a virginal wealthy white woman who knows how to dress, behave, and decorate. The goal is to find a man like Jerry Seinfeld, a husband/sponsor/man-to-commission-whatever-creative-or-philanthropic-endeavors-you’ve-ever-dreamed-of-pursuing. You want to publish a cookbook? Your wish is granted! You want to start an outreach program that provides makeup tutorials for underprivileged women? Shazam! But of course, as I should have known, the Instagram feeds of these kinds of women are inherently deceiving. Be careful not to be seduced by their lives because it’s truly inaccessible to 99.99999 percent of us. One woman got to marry Jerry. The rest of us are stuck with Newmans.

  I tried being a stay-at-home mom for eight weeks. Mari was so easy and chill, and still at the end of the day I was completely exhausted. The little things just took a lot out of me. Like, in the middle of changing her diaper, she would poo immediately onto the new diaper. Then her cute little legs would get so excited from all the expulsion and she’d kick her feet directly into the fresh poo-poo. So I’d give her a hooker bath in the sink, dry the nooks and crannies of her body to ensure no funk would form, put on her new diaper, and then minutes later…she’d poo again. It was a never-ending festival of feces; a real Carnival de Caca.

  Mari’s naps were the only time I would have to myself. People told me to nap when she napped but if I did that, when would I have time to shovel Korean instant ramen into my mouth, ask the Internet how to take care of a newborn baby, and clean up the ever growing pile of dishes and dirty clothes, stained by poo, spit, and breast milk? In one of many efforts to buy myself more time, I cut the sleeves off all of my T-shirts, leaving huge side-boob holes on each side of my shirt so that I would have quicker access to my titties to feed her. But then my nipples got so chapped from the breastfeeding that I just walked around topless because the friction from any fabric was too irritating, and then she’d cry and milk would automatically spray across some of our beautiful framed art on the wall, or onto our West Elm couch (which we now refer to as “the petri dish”), or it would gush down my stomach and my underwear would be soaking wet all of a sudden. The hair dryer became my best friend. I used it to dry my nipples and my tears of exhaustion.

  When Daddy came home from work, I’d have a beard and be talking to a volleyball. Even though Daddy “needed time to decompress from work,” I’d throw Mari into his arms and run directly into the shower. I would say things like “fuck your decompression” or through clenched teeth, “you don’t know where I’ve been.” Sometimes I’d stay in the shower for twenty minutes, just staring into space, spreading my butt cheeks with my hands so the hot water could cascade down my crack. It was the closest thing Mommy got to that hour of morning and afternoon meditation she always dreamed of.

  * * *

  I really began to rethink my plans of being a stay-at-home mom after I saw that movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It’s an acclaimed documentary about the Steve Jobs of sushi in Japan. He’s extremely anal about the temperature of the rice and the texture of the fish. He has two sons that are his protégés, but it’s very hard for them to live up to their father’s legacy. Because Jiro is so dedicated to the craft of sushi, at night he dreams of sushi. Everybody watched that documentary in awe of Jiro and his singular commitment to the art of fish. I watched that film and thought, Where the fuck is Mrs. Jiro? She isn’t even mentioned in the goddamn documentary. Somebody had to ra
ise those two sons while Father Jiro was busy being a sushi hero. Somebody had to wash the cum out of the sheets at night after Jiro furiously beat off to the perfect piece of glistening mackerel in his mind. What does Mrs. Jiro dream of? Freedom. Recognition. Divorce. I saw that movie and decided that I wasn’t gonna go out like that.

  Plus, financially, I had to go back to work.

  In Europe, maternity leave is amazing. New mothers get one year off, sometimes three, paid. In the United States, when you get pregnant, the official policy is to make you go back to work immediately, only with some plastic wrap on the floor of your cubicle to catch the afterbirth still leaking out of your pussy. It’s scary in America to tell your employer that you’re pregnant. On the outside, they’ll generally smile and say things like “I’m so happy for you! Congrats!” But deep down, you know they’re thinking, “So now you can’t come in to work just because a man came inside you?! Congrats, I’m never hiring a woman ever again!”

  When I got pregnant and when I gave birth to Mari, I was lucky enough to be employed at the TV show Fresh Off the Boat. Nahnatchka Khan, the showrunner and my boss, a fucking saint, told me to take as much time off as I needed, and that she would handle the human resources department at the studio. That’s the informal maternity leave policy for any working TV writer if she has the right boss. So I still got paid my same weekly rate as a “story editor” on the show while I was busy healing from the C-section and adjusting to this new roommate (that’s you, Mari!). If you ever have a boss, you need to find someone who will not snitch on you to fucking human resources when you get pregnant. If I had just been a straight stand-up comic at the time, with no other job, I never would have gotten any money during the break that I took. In stand-up comedy, you don’t get paid for any shows if you’re not present. I would have had to go back on the road as soon as possible to start making money for our family again.