On Mother's Day I Gave My Own Mother The Greatest Present of All

Words by Connie Wang

I come from a family of a very specific type of strong women: We are determined, don’t easily flinch, and come alive in a crisis, especially if it threatens our babies. My grandma suffered through The Great Leap Forward with three daughters. My mother was forced to start over in a new country with two young kids and no healthcare. And I underwent the harrowing ordeal of…renovating a kitchen and bathroom while I was 8 months pregnant (WITH a toddler, okay??). 

This characteristic of ours is closely related to another one of our defining personality traits, one that’s as tightly held as it is insufferable: We are women who love to be correct, especially if it means that everyone else is wrong. And despite my relative lack of hardship, my stubborn insistence that I know best is unfortunately hardwired in my genetics. Nothing gives me a bigger rush of dopamine than being able to mumble, even if it’s to no one in particular, Hmm, looks like I might have been right about that?

As you can probably imagine, this makes us annoying to many, especially to each other. But while we’ve learned to rein in our worst tendencies with the rest of our family, friends, and colleagues, we allow each other to be our rawest, most unhinged selves. After all, if you can’t act like a baby in front of your own mother, then when can you? We may be each other’s biggest supporters, but we are also each other’s biggest haters, filing away off-the-cuff quips and comments on the off-chance that we can pull them out, decades later, to prove a point. It’s probably toxic, it’s definitely unhealthy, and I would never recommend anyone else partake in this tradition. But for these three generations of hardheads? It works.

So on Mother’s Day, I gave my own mother a gift that I’d love to receive myself — the satisfaction of being right all along. Here are five things about motherhood and child-having in which she gets to declare, with confidence, that she told me so.

1. “There’s animals in the walls”

When I first moved to Los Angeles with my husband, and we were indulging in the prospect of finally not living in a high-rise apartment, my mother had a warning about traditional homes: Even if you keep your own domain tidy and clean, there is still a high likelihood that there will be vermin hiding in the walls (her example was snakes, for some reason). She suggested that we should try and find something that had just been built. We (and our bank account) laughed her off, and promptly fell in love with a 100-year old bungalow where we lived in blissful peace for five years…until the week right before I was to give birth to my second baby. Within the span of two days, we found an entire civilization of rats who had created a city in the insulation in our attic, as well as a horde of termite larvae that would push their way up through our floorboards, like they were emerging from hell. I spent the two days before my delivery screaming every time I came across an errant grain of floor rice or heard a soft rustling sound.

1. “You’ll probably have a c-section”

My mother, my aunt, and my cousin all had their children via cesarean after failed attempts at vaginal deliveries. I was told that my grandmother had figured that the mortality rate for extremely high-risk vaginal deliveries was still safer than the more extremely high-risk DIY surgeries available to her at the time. For my first delivery, I had no real birth plan, except a stubborn desire to prove them wrong. After 24 hours of labor and six hours of active labor, it was determined that things were not fitting. My emergency c-section was stressful, but the recovery was a breeze — almost as if my body was ready for it. Another point for mom.

1. “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep getting up”

Before I got discharged from the hospital after a c-section, I was asked to pass a series of mini milestones to prove my body was healing in the right way. They sounded simple enough — pee without a catheter, take a couple strolls around the hospital floor — and I was able to do them without too much strain, and so I really went for it, believing that the more I pushed myself to move, bend, and squat, the faster I would heal. As soon as I got home, my mom watched in horror as I lowered myself to the concrete driveway outside my home so my dog could sniff my baby’s head. She was adamant I park it on the couch, and I was adamant that I get back to my regular level of fitness as quickly as possible. In the months that followed, I developed a lower back pain so gnarly, and a pelvic floor that was so weak, that I had to hold the walls to walk around. I couldn’t pick my baby up from his crib without help. When I had my second kid, I let myself rest and veg. I was shocked by how much more I was able to enjoy those first few weeks and months, and how good it felt to actually be able to be there for my kids afterward. But you know who wasn’t shocked? Take a guess. 

1. “It’s good to leave your baby alone”

In theory, I agreed with Mom. There would obviously be times where I’d have to use the bathroom, or make a meal, or put a fitted sheet on the bed, and I’d have to put the baby down. In practice, it felt impossible to do that, and more impossible as my kid started moving and crawling. By the time he was six months, I had gotten used to balancing him on a breastfeeding pillow strapped to my torso while I peed, and cooking with him in a carrier. But every time I’d set him down inside a playpen, he’d become apoplectic. Playing meant watching me play; eating meant me spoonfeeding him every bite; sleeping only happened on my chest, which meant it didn’t happen much for either one of us. It wasn’t until he started going to a neighborhood daycare that I noticed him change at home, growing more independent, curious, and — to my surprise — calmer. My physical body was no longer his only source of comfort. Being able to use the bathroom, make a meal, and occasionally put on a fitted sheet in peace was a win for me and my kid (and, of course, for my mom).

1. “You’re never going to feel ready. But you’re going to be great.”

Mom was ambivalent about whether she wanted to be a mother. When she found herself accidentally pregnant with me, she was young, newly married, with a quickly progressing career as a book editor. None of her friends were very enthusiastic about having children. The timing wasn’t great, but she did it anyway, figuring that it would be at least an adventure. Little did she know that by the time she accidentally became pregnant with my sister, the adventure had turned grim, and she became stuck in a different country unable to return home, separated from a career she was passionate about, friends that were her support system, and a family that meant everything to her. You could say that the timing was atrocious. She was depressed for a decade.

Growing up, I was aware of none of this. The life I lived was the life I knew, and it was a good life. It was a great life! It was so great that when I started approaching the age that my mom was when she had me, I had zero desire to do anything different than what I was doing. And so I didn’t. A decade later, I sat down with my husband to have a conversation that I imagine my mom would have preferred to have had the opportunity to have, and we made the decision to build a family. We didn’t feel ready, we didn’t feel like we’d be good at it, and we weren’t even sure we were doing the right thing. But Mom had faith in motherhood, and my genetic ability to find the rewards within it — even if it took some time. It’d work out, just like it worked out for her, because we knew what it felt like to have been mothered well, and that we’d never have to do it by ourselves. Five years and two kids later, I’m certain she was right.

Connie Wang is a journalist and writer based in Los Angeles. She was born in Jinan, China, raised in Minnesota, and went to school at UC Berkeley. Her debut book, Oh My Mother! A MEMOIR IN NINE ADVENTURES is with Viking Books, and available to purchase now.