How Carrie Underwood Is Figuring Out Her New Normal
Carrie Underwood‘s not just a cool mom, she’s a regular mom. Or so she proclaimed as she walked the red carpet for the 2018 CMT Artists of the Year Awards last October, her six month-pregnant bump swathed in sequined Tadashi Shoji.
“I feel like I’m a working mom, pregnant, I got my stuff to do, you know,” she explained to E! News at the Nashville event, “it’s just an interesting job I have, but I’m just like every other pregnant lady trying to go to work.”
Which is true if you ignore the fact that her nine-to-five requires designer mini dresses, four-and-a-half-inch stiletto sandals and posing in front of an onslaught of cameras and endless rows of screaming fans. Or that her return from maternity leave involves a month of rehearsals for her Cry Pretty Tour 360, kicking off in North Carolina today. (Not to mention that time she performed twice at April’s ACM Awards in Las Vegas 11 weeks postpartum, squeezing in a moment to pump before she hit the stage.)
Other than that, she’s just muddling along like everyone else, she swears. “We’re still figuring out our groove, to be honest,” she explained to E! News’ Carissa Culiner at the ACM awards of how she and husband Mike Fisher, 38, are handling their new life as parents to both 4-year-old Isaiah Fisher and 3-month-old Jacob Fisher. “And I don’t know if we’ll ever figure it out, you know.”
In the meantime, she’s content to show images from the postnatal workouts that have knocked her literally on her back or tweet about the time her eldest dubbed her “Carefree Underwear” instantly sending her back to her elementary school days because, as the 36-year-old singer put it to E! News, “That’s life.”
Because fans are so used to the perfectly appointed persona that glides down red carpets, “For some reason I feel like, I don’t know, people expect more of us ‘celebrities,'” she continued. “And also everybody’s very busy showing the highlight reels of their lives, right?”
But behind the sold out arenas and designer labels, “I mean, I’m a mom first and foremost. That’s my favorite,” she said. “I love my job, but that’s my favorite role to play in, to be in. And, yeah, it’s just, life is messy. We’re all just figuring things out and it’s a big ol’ mess and it’s fun.”
Credit eldest Isaiah for livening it up a bit as he does a bang up job in his role as big brother. Even before Jacob’s January arrival, the preschooler was all in. “He’s such a sweet guy,” the seven-time Grammy winner shared with E! News at the CMT Artists of the Year Awards last fall, “and he’ll look at my belly and be like, ‘Your baby’s getting bigger.’ He’s going to be a great big brother.”
His fascination with his new sibling only grew after Mom and Dad brought him back to their new Nashville-area spread, the dream estate they began designing together back in 2016. Though Underwood admitted to struggling with the juxtaposition of her two sons—”Immediately when you come home with your baby, my other son Isaiah just seemed like a big boy,” she lamented to E! News—it’s been heartwarming to watch them bond.
Noting how much he “loves” his big role, she said, “He calls Jacob ‘My baby. Where’s my baby? How’s my baby? I wanna kiss my baby.’ It’s really cute.”
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Jacob Bryan Fisher entered the world in the wee hours of the morning on Monday…his mom, dad and big brother couldn’t be happier for God to trust them with taking care of this little miracle! Our hearts are full, our eyes are tired and our lives are forever changed. Life is good…
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And then there’s the fact that the “Love Wins” singer wasn’t sure she’d ever have the chance to experience this level of chaos.
As she hinted in that first unguarded interview with last September’s Redbook, 2017 had been “a very soul-searching year for me.” Life as always, she shared, “is full of ups and downs, and I might have had a few more downs than ups last year.”
There was the literal one, of course, the so-called “freak accident” that saw her tripping on a stone step while taking her dogs outside, breaking the fall with her face and ending up with some 50 stitches in her face and a metal plate in her wrist. But then there were the series of emotional tumbles that she kept private up until the point she turned up on CBS Sunday Morning to discuss her new disc Cry Pretty.
She had pinpointed 2017 as the moment she and the hockey pro would expand their family, but three subsequent miscarriages in a 12-month stretch left the American Idol champion devastated, questioning her previously unshakeable faith.
CBS
“I had always been afraid to be angry,” she explained. “Because we are so blessed. And my son, Isaiah, is the sweetest thing. And he’s the best thing in the world. And I’m like, ‘If we can never have any other kids, that’s okay, because he’s amazing.’ And I have this amazing life. Like, really, what can I complain about? I can’t. I have an incredible husband, incredible friends, an incredible job, an incredible kid. Can I be mad? No…and I got mad.”
She funneled her emotions into the recording studio and her sixth studio album, telling Vulture, “I’d have a terrible day at the doctor’s office and then come into a writing session and be like, ‘I’m sorry guys. I might suck today. I just got some bad news.'” But ultimately those raw feelings transformed themselves into a gold-certified disc, the best selling country album since Luke Bryan‘s 2015 effort Kill the Lights.
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“I was lucky enough to be around people that I felt really comfortable with,” she told the outlet. “I thought, ‘What am I gonna do? Go home and wallow in this all day long? No, I want to keep working. I want to keep pushing forward. This is still something that has to be done.’ And I kinda needed that at the time, just to have something to stay focused on that wasn’t my personal life.”
Eventually, though, her home life caught up to her career successes and just when the musician was convinced she was suffering her fourth miscarriage, she learned the pregnancy was right on track.
“The road to having this baby was so difficult emotionally and physically on both Mike and Carrie,” a source told Us Weekly, “so to have Jacob come home happy and healthy really fills them with immeasurable joy.”
So, sure, that time she was forced to carry “my naked, poo covered screaming baby up the stairs” after she made the “rookie mistake” of leaving her diaper bag behind wasn’t great. And she’s not going to say she loved spending half the night awake with a congested baby ahead of the ACM Awards.
But as she was pushing her way through an especially grueling weight lifting set, the Calia by Carrie Underwood designer had the dawning realization that her body grew and nourished two humans, which is a damn impressive feat. “I promise to stop analyzing every angle and every curve and every pound and every meal,” she vowed to her 8.5 million followers. “I’m going to keep staying the path because it is a journey and as long as I’m always working towards my goals, one day I’ll reach them. I’m going to take it day by day, smile at the girl in the mirror, and work out because I love this body and all it has done and will continue to do!”
And if she can master the tricky dance that is body confidence, she’s certain she’ll conquer life on the road with two tiny humans as well. She has some experience, after all, having brought an 11-month-old Isaiah onto her Storyteller Tour back in 2016.
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