CARRIE’S BABY JOY: “IT TOOK US A WHILE TO GET HERE”
The future’s never been brighter for Carrie Underwood as she preps for a new tour and baby boy No. 2
Underwood tells Us about her pregnancy ups and downs.
Brad Paisley had a plan: pester Carrie Underwood until she snapped. As they took the stage on Nov. 14 to host the Country Music Association Awards together for the 11th straight year, Brad begged the pregnant singer to reveal the gender of her baby. “Seriously, Carrie, gimme a little baby hint,” he demanded before peppering (make that hammering!) her with the names of famous male-female duos. “Johnny or June? Keith or Nicole? Garth or
Trisha?” Then he threw her a curveball — “Waylon or Willie?” — and she finally caved, confessing to the cheering audience, “Willie! It’s a Willie!”
With her second son due in January, according to Taylor Dye of tour opener Maddie & Tae (“We’ve offered to babysit!” she tells Us), Carrie says she’s never felt “so blessed.” In September, she revealed she’d suffered three heartbreaking miscarriages over the past two years. Now she’s overwhelmed with gratitude that she and her husband, retired NHL star Mike Fisher, are having another child.
“It took us a while to get here…
I’m gonna cry again,” she told Us backstage at the Nov. 14 awards show. “[I’m] just so thankful... to find out Isaiah’s gonna have a baby brother. It was just great news. We’re excited.”
This is a pretty remarkable time for the “Cry Pretty” singer. Right after last year’s CMAs, she went into hiding after a fall at her Nashville home left her with gruesome injuries, including a broken wrist and facial lacerations that required around 50 stitches. Carrie only recently admitted that the sutures left her physically unable to sing for a time — which would be traumatic for anyone, but especially for a professional musician. Then came another miscarriage in early 2018. But she pushed through, healing physically and emotionally as she cowrote, recorded and, for the first time, coproduced an album, her sixth, which debuted at No. 1 in September.
On Nov. 14, she won the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year award — for the fifth time. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t want awards, because I’m a competitive person, and I love these shows… For me, with all the ups and downs we’ve been through, plus making an album on top of all of that, this one definitely means a lot,” Carrie admits. “I’m honored to get to hold some pretty incredible titles. Mom is definitely [also] one of them.”
Soon she’ll be a mom times two. Luckily, Carrie says, she’s been feeling “good” in her third trimester. In fact, the most challenging thing about the CMAs isn’t what you might expect. According to Carrie, cohosting, giving an acceptance speech and even performing her new single, “Love Wins,” were a breeze compared to getting dressed in multiple designer gowns and high heels “when you don’t recognize your own body,” she tells “And I feel kinda bad for returning dresses
[to fashion designers who loaned them] that aren’t maternity dresses, all stretched out in the middle!”
She joked that she was looking forward to going home to put on her pj’s — and she can look forward to plenty more of that. With the holidays and her due date fast approaching, Carrie, 35, will soon take a step back from promoting her new music and instead spend time nesting with Mike, 38, and Isaiah, 3, in the palatial home they’ve just built south of Nashville (see box) before the new baby’s arrival. But ever the planner, Carrie admits she won’t be able to disconnect from work entirely — she’s got a 55-date tour kicking off
“I FEEL LIKE THIS [PREGNANCY] IS JUST A LITTLE HARDER ON MY SOME BODY FOR BUT REASON… IT’S BEEN REALLY GOOD.” CARRIE Isaiah Will Be Such a Great Big Brother!
immediately after a brief maternity leave. “There’s definitely a lot of tour work to be done,” she says. “Our first show date is the very beginning of May, so we’ll be rehearsing... all of April and planning basically from now until then. But it’s exciting. It’s a blank slate… It’s so much fun.”
The secret to making it all work, Carrie says, is balance. “Balance is what it’s all about, no matter what your job is. Being a mom, working and dividing your time. It’s what we all have to do as mothers,” she told
Us at the CMT Artists of the Year celebration in Nashville in October. She’s already leading by example, inspiring the younger country music stars who hope to follow in her footsteps personally and professionally. “I mean, she’s a legend!” says Kelsea Ballerini,
25. “I call her Queen Carrie because, in my brain, she’s on a pedestal.” And Maddie
& Tae’s Madison Marlow, 23, calls Carrie a superwoman.
“It’s hard to believe that she’s human,” she tells Us. “She looks so perfect!”
As she navigates the transition from her tight-knit clan of three to a family of four, she has one eye firmly on the future. “I’m excited that [Isaiah and this baby] get to see their mom... on stage, and hopefully I can be an inspiration to my children and to other working moms out there,” she says, “because we got this.”
In these final weeks of her pregnancy, Carrie wants to relish every moment with Isaiah because she knows “his world is about to get rocked,” she recently confessed. She herself still isn’t sure what their new normal will be as she and Mike go from one to two — “You’ll have to talk to me in a few months so I can really tell you what it’s like!” she says — but she knows one thing for sure: “It’s gonna be a great year.”