MacKenzie Porter Talks Motherhood: ‘It’s Been Amazing’ (Exclusive)

Back in March, country singer MacKenzie Porter and her husband — actor Jake Etheridge — welcomed their first child, a daughter named Bowen James Porter Etheridge, who they call Bowie for short. PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Porter and we asked how things are going with her new little family. “It’s been amazing,” she told us, adding that Bowie “is literally the cutest, sweetest little thing in the world, so we’re really happy.”

Porter went on to admit that the new parents are “totally” in the phase where they are learning what best comforts their baby girl when she’s fussy or needs a nap. “Do we swaddle? Is it the soother? We find it’s never the sitting position, ever,” she quipped. “It’s always like she’ll be dead asleep, dead asleep, and I’ll have been rocking her and I’ll sit down and I’ll keep rocking her. The second I hit that chair, she’s [awake], I’m like, ‘Oh my God, how do you even know?’”

While she feels like it’s too soon for her to “be giving anybody advice yet,” Porter offered some insight that she’s gained over the past couple of months. “If there was one thing that I’ve learned… all of these emotions of feeling overwhelmed, and stressed, and so much love and then frustrated with the crying… it’s all normal.

Noting that she sometimes feels “super” anxious, Porter continued, “I’ve texted a couple friends being like, ‘I’m feeling really stressed,’ and they’ll be like, ‘That’s totally normal.’ I think just knowing that, sometimes you put so much pressure on yourself of like, ‘Am I doing a good job? Is this normal? Am I doing the right thing?’ Everybody who I’ve talked to has been through it and felt the same things.”

“I’m in awe of people that have more than one,” Porter joked. “I think because we’re in the thick of the no sleep. I’m like, ‘How do people juggle more than one kid?’ But maybe when they get a little older it gets a little easier.”

Porter just dropped a brand new album, which means that her concert schedule is about to kick into high gear. When it comes to how she plans to juggle parenthood and touring, the singer explained that “there’s definitely different conversations” between herself, her husband and her team. 

“We have to think, ‘OK, are we all going to go? Am I just going to go for the weekend?’” Porter said. “Obviously, the good thing about country music is sometimes it’s just the weekends, which makes it easier, but there’s a lot of me flying through the night.”

She then shared, “I have a show coming up and I fly that day and then I play the show and I fly through the night so I can get here when she wakes up. So yeah, it’s just a lot of scheduling stuff for right now until she gets older. Then I’m just going to take her and she’ll just be like one of those little kids with the headphones backstage.”

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