“Hang on a second.” She jumps up and returns a minute later with a silent, bleary-eyed 20-pound smoosh ball. “This is Méi.” I’m not a baby person—even when I had my own babies, I was not a baby person (I know, not a great look). But squishy, smooshy baby Méi in her little cotton floral dress and matching bloomers is 80% thighs and incredibly cute. Munn places her in my arms and there she stays. Okay, so we’re doing this. And then I understood why. This baby is like an ad for babies. No crying or fussing or squirming. Just chill.
“Do you think you’ll tell her that you had a surrogate?” I ask.
“Oh yeah, the surrogate’s still in our life,” says Munn. “She was a better pregnant woman than I ever could have been.”
Munn and Mulaney found their surrogate through an agency. “First of all, she doesn’t know any celebrities,” says Munn, who only cared about one thing: “Above everything else, I just wanted her to be kind.” They chose a woman in Massachusetts. “She’s an incredible mother, an incredible human being, an incredible friend, just wonderful,” Munn says. “I needed [her] to understand that I needed to go this route. It wasn’t for superficial reasons or because I wanted to put my work first. I’m not saying that any of those reasons aren’t valid for those people. And I’m not judging anyone who makes those decisions based on that, but I needed her to understand this would be hard for me.”
She pauses for a beat and looks out at the ocean. Then she’s back.
“It makes me emotional—it’s your baby, and the baby is somewhere else in the world.” Baby Méi ignores us and focuses on my hand, trying to make sense of my fingers.
Munn and Mulaney were in the delivery room when Méi was born. “The first person John hugged was the husband, he gave him a big kiss on the cheek…. It was just wonderful.”
All good, right? New baby, full nest, technically cancer-free. (“Although my doctors don’t use that term,” she says, “because we are still in a diligent fight for the next five years battling any cancer cells that are still in my body—which is a high likelihood.”) This seemed like a great time to be rounding in on the happy ending. Except.
“I really tested John’s patience,” she says. “And thank God he’s the most patient person and can really take a lot.” A side effect of her estrogen-zapping cancer medication was making her feel like a person she didn’t recognize. “I felt like I had one hand on a door with a monster trying to break in, and I was just holding it there the whole time…. Just at any second, it’s going to burst through.”
On the flight back to California after Méi was born, “I grabbed hold of John, and for the first time, explained the monster behind the door. I explained that I don’t like being this way. I have to be on this medicine to keep my life safe, but I’m so out of my own body and I feel like I don’t have any control over this. I broke down crying, saying, ‘I need help.’ And he just said, ‘Okay, we’re going to go to your oncologist. We’re going to figure this out….’ We tried two more medications and now we’re on one that thankfully is working.”
You know how there are people who say “we” to signify they’re one, like saying “we’re pregnant,” and you throw up a little in your mouth? That’s not what’s going on here. Throughout Munn’s—what do you call postpartum anxiety, plus cancer, plus five surgeries?—well, whatever it is, she and Mulaney were in it together as much as two people could be. When she says things like “we tried two more medications,” it’s not an affectation. You get the sense that it was all happening to both of them together.
