Carrie Underwood has revealed that she suffered from three miscarriages in the last two years.
The “Cry Pretty” singer — who shares son Isaiah, 3, with hockey player husband Mike Fisher, 38, and has a baby on the way — opened up about her challenging fertility struggles in an interview on CBS Sunday Morning, saying she experienced the first miscarriage last year.
“I’d kind of planned that 2017 was, you know, going to be the year that I work on new music, and I have a baby,” said Underwood, 35. “We got pregnant early 2017, and didn’t work out.”
At the time, Underwood leaned into her faith. “And that was the thing, in the beginning, it was like, ‘Okay, God, we know this is, just wasn’t Your timing. And that is all right. We will bounce back and figure our way through it.’”
After suffering a second miscarriage in 2017 and a third in 2018, “at that point, it was just kind of like, ‘Okay, like, what’s the deal? What is all of this?’” said Underwood.
“I had always been afraid to be angry,” Underwood explained of her reaction to the heartbreak on CBS. “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.”
But when she thought she might be suffering a fourth miscarriage, “I got mad,” Underwood told CBS News’ Tracy Smith.
One of her most emotional moments came as she cuddled with her son and thought, “Why on Earth do I keep getting pregnant if I can’t have a kid? Like, what is this? Shut the door. Like, do something. Either shut the door or let me have a kid.”
“And for the first time, I feel like I actually I told God how I felt,” she added. “That was like a Saturday — and the Monday I went to the doctor to, like, confirm, another miscarriage. And they told me everything was great!”
She said, “He heard me.”
In the cover story for Redbook‘s September issue, Underwood expressed worry that her window for expanding her family could be closing. “I’m 35, so we may have missed our chance to have a big family,” she noted, leading to some mixed reactions from fans.
“We always talk about adoption and about doing it when our child or children are a little older,” she added. “In the meantime, we’re lucky to be a part of organizations that help kids, because our focus right now in our lives is helping as many kids as possible.”
She also got candid about her tough 2017, which included a rough fall last November. Underwood tripped on the steps outside her Nashville home as she was taking her dogs out, suffering injuries that led to 40-50 stitches in her face and surgery on her broken wrist.
“It was … a very soul-searching year for me,” Underwood recalled to Redbook. “There were some personal things that happened. And I had the accident and all of that to get through … and just life. Life is full of ups and downs, and I might have had a few more downs than ups last year.”
The accident changed the way that she saw herself. “It was also a perception thing, because I look at myself [now] and I see it quite a bit, but other people are like, ‘I wouldn’t have even noticed.’ Nobody else looks at you as much as you think they do. Nobody notices as much as you think they will, so that’s been nice to learn.”
“It just wasn’t pretty,” Underwood said on Today.
Now that Underwood has recovered from the injury and is expecting her second child, the superstar her family are preparing for some exciting changes. When Jimmy Fallon asked Underwood on The Tonight Show if Isaiah understands his new role as a big brother, Underwood said, “I don’t think for real he does.”
She gushed, “He’ll be really sweet and talk to my belly and kiss my belly. He’s the sweetest little boy. But no kid can really know that their life is going to change… He’ll have to share Mommy.”