Conan and his wife, Liza, were the first two people to find out about my pregnancy. We were recording something at Conan\u2019s house during the COVID-\u00ad19 pandemic, and after a long day of shooting, Conan offered me some wine, which I turned down. Shocked by my sudden sobriety, Conan thought it could only be one thing: pregnancy. He basically shouted at me, \u201cWhat, are you pregnant?\u201d And, of course, he was right. We had just found out about a week earlier, and I couldn\u2019t lie to him, especially since he and Liza had such a big role in our growing family.<\/p>\n
After we got married, Tak and I sunk our combined life savings into buying a house in Altadena, a suburb of Los Angeles, and we thought our family could grow in the house with us. We had no idea we\u2019d need expensive fertility treatments before that dream could become a reality, and so when we realized that was the path we\u2019d have to take to parenthood, we had no money to pay for it. We thought about asking our parents or my brother for money, but we knew they would be weird about us paying them back, so we asked my surrogate family, the O\u2019Briens.<\/p>\n
I hate asking people for help. I hate being vulnerable and showing weakness, but I mustered up my meager courage and asked Conan if I could borrow some money so we could start fertility treatments. When he said yes as soon as I asked \u2014\u00ad without even thinking \u2014\u00ad I was overcome with emotion. My first thought was \u201cI should\u2019ve asked for more money.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the way home, Conan\u2019s accountant called me and said that, on second thought, Conan and Liza wanted to give me the money as a gift, without expecting any repayment. I hung up, burst into tears, and called Tak. We knew it was important for us to prove to ourselves that we were ready to be parents, and paying for our treatments was one of the ways we could do that, so we insisted on paying them back. Even so, every time I think of the gesture, I\u2019m overwhelmed by the O\u2019Briens\u2019 generosity all over again. And yet, it only makes sense that Conan played such an important role in making me a mother. After all, he was my practice child for over ten years, and what better end to my role as a caretaker for him than becoming a caretaker to my actual children?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying I was maternal with him in the traditional sense of the word, but I did (and still do) worry about him in many ways a parent might worry about their kid. I worried about whether he ate, and whether he ate enough. I worried about whether he was comfortable. Did he have a change of clothes in case something got smudged on his shirt? Did he pack everything he needed when he went on a trip? Is he happy? Is he sad? Is he grumpy? Is he frustrated? Why is he frustrated? Can I help him take deep breaths and relax? Does he need to use the potty? Is there a potty nearby?<\/p>\n
Conan was the person I worried about for so many years, and when I got pregnant, everything shifted. I\u2019m not saying Conan was jealous, but he did call my babies Rub and Tug for the duration of my pregnancy, like any anxious firstborn might while awaiting new siblings.<\/p>\n
I was worried that our dynamic would change, and it did. But not for the worst. When my boys were born, I sent videos and photos to Conan regularly, and he was so genuinely happy for me and Tak. He came to our house to meet them when the boys were about six months old and Conan picked favorites right away because one smiled at him and the other didn\u2019t. He then held a grudge against the one who didn\u2019t react to him for months and months after. And no, I won\u2019t disclose who is his favorite because I\u2019m worried my boys will read this one day. I want to hold out hope that they both now find Conan amusing, and any beef he might\u2019ve had with the one who didn\u2019t give him what he wanted has faded away.<\/p>\n
My first book<\/a> chronicled the twelve incredibly fun and chaotic years of being Conan\u2019s executive assistant. As with motherhood, I didn\u2019t always get it right. As with motherhood, I often took shortcuts or didn\u2019t pay attention to details. There were days when I phoned it in and didn\u2019t give him the attention he deserved or needed. But everything I did for Conan I did from a place of love. I cared about him and wanted to make sure, above all else, that he was happy and taken care of. I worried about him and wanted to help him when he was having a rough day. He laughs at me like my kids laugh at me. He gets frustrated at me like my kids get frustrated with me, only they yell and scream. Conan wouldn\u2019t throw a tantrum\u2014\u00ad well, he would actually\u2014but usually, he just becomes more passive-\u00ad aggressive than usual, which is worse than tantrums in most ways.<\/p>\n This is jumping ahead, but a month before my due date, I started training my replacement, David Hopping. I told my doctor I was still going to the office every day, and he said, \u201cI really wish you wouldn\u2019t,\u201d so I took that as a good time as any to start planning for my maternity leave. The closer I got to my due date, the harder it became for me to move comfortably. The Largo is almost an hour away from where I lived in Altadena, so the drive was getting almost unbearable. Tak eventually started driving me to work, but it didn\u2019t make sense for me to keep going to the office, since I could barely move when I got there. No one has ever been happier to convalesce.<\/p>\n That is, until Conan had announced that he would no longer be hosting his late-\u00adnight show Conan. So after almost thirty years, his work in late night was coming to an end at the Largo, and his final show was a week before my scheduled C-\u00adsection. Against the wishes of every medical professional involved in my birth, I determined to go to the Largo to watch the shows. I knew there was no way I was going to miss Conan\u2019s last late-night show, so I powered through and was able to make it to the theater for his last episode, with Jack Black. My friend Meghan Sinclair was the photographer and took a photo of me grabbing my giant bulging belly and looking through two glassy eyes I know were holding back tears. I\u2019m so happy I could be there, and in a way, my boys were there with me, watching their Uncle Coco and the end of an era.<\/p>\n A week later, my baby boys were born. They waited so I could properly finish my time working as the assistant to late-\u00adnight host Conan O\u2019Brien. I know I\u2019m reading into it, but they held on long enough so I could watch this monumental moment, like they knew how much it meant to me to be there.<\/p>\n The version of Conan they know has never hosted a late-\u00adnight show. Their Conan is the host for the Oscars, a podcast host, a voice in Toy Story 5, a world traveler, an occasional actor, and many other things. More importantly, their Uncle Coco works with their mom, and we work in a building with a lot of snacks. When they\u2019re older, I\u2019ll show them some of Conan\u2019s most notable comedy bits, like WikiBear<\/a>, or Minty the Candy Cane That Briefly Fell on the Ground<\/a>, or FedEx Pope<\/a>, or the Masturbating Bear<\/a>. Okay, maybe I won\u2019t actually watch those clips with them. Maybe I\u2019ll just let them discover them all on their own. But when they\u2019re old enough, I will show them the episode when their Uncle Coco took their mom to Armenia<\/a>, and I\u2019ll tell them this was how their dad found out who their mom was and how we met six months later. Maybe I\u2019ll play some of the podcast episodes for them, like the one when I told Conan and Matt I was pregnant, or other episodes when we talk about them. These nepo babies have no idea how much of their life has already been lived in the spotlight.<\/p>\n Not getting to work with Conan daily as his assistant has been one of the bigger sacrifices I\u2019ve made as a mom, because I loved my job. I loved helping him with whatever new and exciting project he was working on. Getting the job working for Conan changed my life, and it\u2019s only apt that the next big life-\u00adchanging moment for me is what changed our dynamic. I miss getting to go on cool trips and eating delicious meals from the best restaurants. Knowing I\u2019ve been able to make this transition to motherhood and not only maintain my relationship with Conan but also introduce him and Liza into my kids\u2019 lives makes me miss my old job less.<\/p>\n These days, as I find myself digging into my purse to get a snack for my kids before they have a full-\u00adblown tantrum, I\u2019m reminded of all the times I would run to a nearby deli to get a little nibble for Conan before a photo shoot or an event he was hosting. I\u2019m deeply grateful for all the years I was Conan\u2019s assistant, unknowingly training myself for the biggest job I would ever have, and I find myself really missing my 60-something-\u00adyear-\u00adold practice baby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conan and his wife, Liza, were the first two people to find out about my pregnancy. We were…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1037193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[43213,1022,185,70103,171,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1037192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-book-excerpt","tag-books","tag-celebrities","tag-chapters","tag-entertainment","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1037193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}