Why Rosebud Baker Left Saturday Evening Dwell: Unique E-book Excerpt

It was becoming that I discovered I used to be pregnant at 30 Rock, as a result of that’s the place I realized function with zero sleep, and realized that irrespective of how badly you need one thing, it may not occur for you if you need it to.

Convinced after two miscarriages that my uterus was mainly ornamental, I had began IVF throughout season 48 — a enjoyable little course of that made me need to homicide my husband. I used to be storing fertility medication in my workplace mini fridge, hiding used needles in my workplace trash can like a drug addict, bloated like a tick, hormones turning me right into a werewolf, and what was Andy’s contribution? Jerking off right into a cup whereas scrolling by his cellphone.

“Good luck, honey!” he mentioned to me whereas handing his pattern to the nurse.

Then, after all of the needles, the hormones, and the cash we’d by no means see once more, I bought pregnant the old style approach: spousal rape. I’m kidding. It was consensual. (But I like a traditionally correct joke!)

The IVF had nothing to do with it. It occurred throughout some forgettable Tuesday night time quickie the place we have been each half-asleep and absolutely clothed.

The nervousness hit like a freight practice after that. Would this one stick? Would the infant make it previous the primary trimester? Past the second? And then after they did, it was on to: Would they end up like me? Would I end up like me? How the FUCK, after having a child, would I get again to being myself?

I’d fought so arduous to grow to be this one who’d earned a spot within the SNL writers’ room and on phases across the nation. Survived my sister’s dying. Crawled out of alcoholism. Escaped “Whiskey Fists” Cain who, I shit you not, opened a boxing health club after we broke up — so I assume we each discovered our objective. I’d constructed a profession, landed my dream job, was pregnant, and as soon as once more, discovered myself staring on the ceiling, about to punch by to . . . what? The full erasure of all the pieces I’d constructed?

Ten and a half months after taking that take a look at, I’d discover out.

Minnow was in her bassinet. Six weeks had handed since my C-section, and although I technically had two weeks of maternity go away left, I felt like I wanted to be again at work. Nobody mentioned that explicitly, however I couldn’t get a straight reply about how a lot time individuals sometimes took off. It appeared like they didn’t take any. I used to be informed a narrative a couple of author who was nonetheless making edits to a sketch whereas in labor and bouncing on an train ball.

So I returned, anxious to get again within the recreation. I had grown a complete human being inside my physique and introduced her into the world. I ought to have felt like a God. Limitless. Invincible. A creator of life itself. Instead, I felt an unfamiliar mixture of apathy and abject worry. Fear as a result of I couldn’t get myself to care the way in which I had even six weeks prior, and apathy as a result of, nicely, I’d been by a paradigm-shift.

My writing suffered. The sketches I submitted didn’t make it to the desk learn. I misplaced confidence.

One day earlier than we have been about to go on a mid-season break, a male colleague requested if I had any plans.

I opened my mouth to reply, however all I may summon was a heavy sigh.

He clocked my hundred-yard stare and replied, “Oh that’s right, you’re a mom now,” earlier than turning to ask another person what enjoyable issues they’d be doing over the break.

I used to be there, however I wasn’t. I felt like a coat rack.

I made it by season 49, however I used to be fairly disenchanted with my output, so I threw myself again into stand-up. I used to be engaged on my second particular, this time for Netflix. I’d filmed the primary half of it on the Comedy Cellar after I was eight and a half months pregnant. Now, I deliberate to return there, eleven months after Minnow was born, and shoot the opposite half. The concept was to chop each performances collectively — two whole hours — into one hour of edited materials. I hoped it might give a humorous, correct, and sincere depiction of being pregnant and postpartum life. I actually wasn’t certain if it might work, although. If it didn’t, my backup plan was to place out the postpartum hour by itself.

After taking pictures the second set, I used to be requested again to SNL for the fiftieth anniversary season as a author for “Weekend Update” as an alternative of as a sketch author. This was really an enormous win. It was my favourite a part of the present, and the joke-dense section was in my consolation zone as a author. I felt like I knew what I used to be doing in a approach I by no means had with sketch. I felt helpful on “Weekend Update,” not simply each occasionally, however on daily basis. It was additionally a job that I may carry out whereas juggling the discharge and promotion of my particular, which was slated to come back out in the midst of season 50. Thanks to an unimaginable editor named Kelly Lyon, the 2 separate hours of stand-up reduce collectively superbly for the particular. Kelly had completed parody commercials, music movies, and digital shorts at SNL; edited all of John Mulaney’s specials; and was herself a mother. In February 2025, The Mother Lode debuted on Netflix. It was an hour of comedy that packed a lot of my life into it and lined a set of extremely sentimental life experiences with out ever feeling sappy. I used to be pleased with it in a long-lasting approach that hardly ever occurs for me with the issues I make.

After it got here out, I sensed one thing starting to shift in how I thought of my work, and my ambitions.

I beloved SNL, nevertheless it wasn’t mine.

Stand-up was.

Minnow was.

And if there was ever going to be a center path — a approach to steadiness motherhood and my profession — I used to be going to must be the one to carve it.

In June 2025, after season 50 wrapped, Andy, Minnow, and I launched into a European stand-up tour.

The logistics have been enjoyable. Minnow was virtually two, and we up to date our riders (the record of issues venues present for artists) to incorporate crayons, a ball, and a few paper. I’d wait backstage with Minnow whereas Andy carried out, then he’d deliver me up, I’d hand him our toddler just like the crown jewels, and we’d swap locations.

Tag-team parenting meets tag-team comedy.

We turned true playground connoisseurs. Berlin, Amsterdam, London — we hit each slide and swing set. Out of worry of a lawsuit there’s no approach you’d ever see a trampoline constructed right into a sidewalk in New York City, however in Berlin they have been in all places. At Kensington Gardens, we spent two hours trying to find Winnie the Pooh’s home, checking each tree hole, whereas a suspicious Minnow regarded for a tiny door she may knock on.

We taught Minnow to say “Money!” as an alternative of “Cheese!” for photographs, as a result of I’d heard someplace that Joan Rivers as soon as advisable it, and we thought that was hilarious. We hadn’t absolutely thought-about the optics of American capitalists wandering round Europe through the second Trump administration with a toddler screaming, “MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!” at each picture alternative, however the appears to be like we bought have been priceless.

When I bought house, I went to see Bill Burr carry out in Glengarry Glen Ross, and I bumped into his co-star Bob Odenkirk backstage. Bob wrote at SNL within the late eighties and early nineties.

“You still there?” Bob requested me.

Much like after I meet one other recovering alcoholic, I really feel an ease after I’m speaking to somebody who has written on the present. We’ve been by the identical shit, spent hundred-hour weeks in the identical windowless room.

“Yeah. Well . . .” I mentioned.

“What are you at, four years?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s when I left.”

“How did you do it?”

He mentioned, with unimaginable simplicity, “I just knew I really wanted a shot at performing, and I didn’t see it happening there.”

There’s nothing just like the readability of listening to your individual ideas come out of another person’s older, wiser, and way more profitable mouth.

I didn’t return to the present for season 51. In a humorous approach, writing at SNL was virtually a direct analogy for early motherhood. Working on the present and changing into a mother have been goals I hardly believed would ever occur. When they did, I wished to absorb each second, however was so sleep-deprived that my mind couldn’t kind new reminiscences. Creatively, my world expanded. Socially, it contracted. I noticed the identical partitions on daily basis, and the identical individuals inside them. Sometimes, my relationships outdoors of these partitions suffered — however to steadiness it out, my relationships inside these partitions suffered too! Yet, after I walked out of 30 Rock — proper as I used to be ending early motherhood — I needed I’d appreciated the time a little bit extra, and that the magic of all of it had lasted a little bit longer. Both experiences bonded me to the individuals I shared them with in profound ways in which may by no means have occurred in any other case.

SNL modifications everybody’s life who’s fortunate sufficient to the touch it, nevertheless it modified mine in each conceivable approach. With good medical insurance I used to be in a position to give delivery and take my child to the physician. I used to be in a position to get skilled assist determining I had postpartum melancholy — one thing I didn’t do till proper earlier than I left the present, which underscores how a lot I used to be white-knuckling it by these final two years. I began taking Wellbutrin, which allowed me to place into perspective a lot of the pervasive guilt and alienation I had felt in my private {and professional} life. I even bought permitted to purchase an house by a co-op board, who would’ve assumed I used to be a part of some cash laundering scheme if it weren’t for Lorne writing my advice letter.

I used to worry {that a} stand-up comedy profession and motherhood have been too basically demanding to coexist in my life. That every required an excessive amount of from me, bodily, to maintain doing each. But I’ve realized an excessive amount of about myself to fret about that anymore.

I bought sober; I left my abuser. I labored my ass off in comedy, put out two hour-long specials, wrote this e book, and was on the workers of America’s final remaining comedy establishment. I grew and gave delivery to an individual who is totally depending on me. I used to be ripped open, sewn up, and returned to work earlier than the stitches dissolved. I put in twelve-hour days, got here house, and realized the language of an individual who had no language to talk. Then I taught that particular person a complete language. I by no means knew if I used to be doing any of this with any diploma of ability. I simply hoped that it might all work out.

I don’t consider that girls are placed on this earth to be moms. I consider the selection to grow to be a mom is equally as brave as the selection to not be. It’s essential to me that my daughter is aware of that — that each one ladies know that. We’re creators, and whether or not we create youngsters, concepts, music, companies, cults, crimes, scams, cures for illness, and even simply new methods to agitate individuals, I feel we should always take pleasure in that.

To me, the purpose of inventive endeavors is discovery. Sometimes they’re an try to find the world; extra typically, they’re an try to find ourselves. I principally do the second. At the chance of sounding navel-gazey, I see my entire life as an effort to get nearer to determining who I actually am and what I actually suppose. It’s not a course of with a finite ending. Part of me needs it may occur in a linear approach — that there can be a degree of arrival at a pleasant, clear second I may maintain up like {a photograph}, witness my absolutely baked self, and say, “There she is! All done! She figured it out!” But I do know it doesn’t occur that approach. The closest I’ll get to reaching remaining kind is when Andy pulls the plug on his imply and filthy spouse. Until then, I’ll hold exploring, hold following my very own instincts. Even after they threaten the soundness of the current second.

That’s what I consider dwelling a inventive life is about: being prepared to sacrifice some extent of consolation for the sake of discovery, for the sake of what you’re keen on. It’s not comfy to cart a toddler from state to state, nation to nation, to get onstage and carry out my little idea-puzzles, looking for a diamond in a pile of rocks. But I additionally suppose there’s extra to it than that. I’m modeling one thing for Minnow that I need her to see, which is that life is value analyzing.

People typically have a look at us on the highway collectively and ask: “How do you tour and do standup with a toddler? It seems so exhausting!”

They aren’t unsuitable. I’m typically exhausted.

But how fortunate am I, to be exhausted by love?

Excerpted from FULLY BAKED: A Messy Memoir by Rosebud Baker.  Copyright © by Rosebud Baker.  Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.