Maren Morris is one proud — and protective — new mother. The 30-year-old is opening up about her decision to not share any photos of her four-month-old son, Hayes, on social media — a decision she made after too many fans criticized one of her pictures.
“We were tying a pool float to the dock, and I just wanted to get a photo in the float with Hayes,” Maren recalled to SiriusXM’s Storme Warren. “We were tied to the dock, were are in a foot of water and I am holding him. I posted it to Instagram and I got so many comments. Mostly moms, and they are just like ‘Where is his infant life vest?’ I just remember thinking to myself [that] I can deal with criticism; I can deal with people saying my music sucks or that I am ruining country music. That I have all heard before and can take off like water off a duck’s back, but I cannot take right now criticism of my motherhood, ’cause I am so fresh in it.
“So I just decided that if it’s not something that I can expose to for my own mental health, I am just going to take the photos off and not open myself up to that kind of criticism,” she continued. “It’s usually from people that are insecure in their own parenthood and are wanting to put that on you so they don’t feel as bad with what they are doing. We are all fighting that battle…. I kind of did delete a lot of stuff off of socials regarding Hayes cause I don’t want to open myself up, or Ryan [Hurd], or Hayes to that. So for right now, maybe I’ll put photos of him up there again, for right now I just want to keep that part a little more private.”
Maren was supposed to be on her RSVP the Tour this year, with Ryan serving as one of her opening acts, but has instead found herself spending time at home with her son, and she is cherishing every minute.
“I was supposed to go back and play a festival, I think two months after Hayes was born,” Maren recalled. “It got cancelled and the rest of the tour got rescheduled for next year. I remember when that weekend came up that we were supposed to be gone on the road, I was like ‘Oh my God, I am in no way ready to be doing that right now.’ So it is sort of like this gift of time and being able to be home and see every single moment that he has because they grow up so quickly and we’ll never get this first year back…. We get to witness every little milestone that Hayes has so that has been really special.”
Maren recently recounted her traumatic birth story, which ended in an emergency C-section after 30 hours of labor.
“I wish people talked more about their C-section stories because I felt, like a lot of mothers, just really isolated, really lonely, right after because it was this unexpected major surgery I ended up getting,” Maren said on Little Spoon’s Is This Normal video series. “So that was probably the craziest thing. But now that I’m four months postpartum, I feel a lot better. I’ve been cleared by my doctor to work out again.
“It’s nice to engage yourself and feel like you’re getting back into your body a little bit because it’s been borrowed for a year,” added the singer. “You will come back; you will snap back. It takes time. It takes nine months to grow a baby. You need at least that to get back to yourself, so don’t rush it.”