Photo: GETTY IMAGES
MacKenzie Porter is a mom!
The country singer-songwriter and her husband, musician and actor Jake Etheridge, announced their newborn daughter’s arrival on Thursday morning (March 21). Bowen James Porter Etheridge — “Bowie” — was born last Thursday, March 14, at 7:21 a.m., Porter said as she shared PEOPLE’s photos on Instagram.
“She is healthy! She loves milk! She loves cuddles!” Porter gushed in her caption. “She loves to sleep all day and party all night! She has a full head of black hair (the heartburn was very worth it) and we will never ever love anything more than our little Bo girl 🩷🎀🩷”
Bowie “made her grand entrance into the world,” Porter said, weighing 7 lbs. and measuring 17.5 inches long. The new parents told PEOPLE that their lives “completely changed,” after their baby’s birth. “Our daughter took her first breath and she is now forever the reason we breathe. Life just got so much sweeter, snugglier and sleepier all in a matter of minutes. Mommy and Daddy love you so so so much little Bowie girl.”
Porter and Etheridge added in their statement to the publication that they took “the world’s slowest drive” home from the hospital with their “precious cargo,” and have spent their first days as a family of three with “endless cuddles,” and Google searches to help care for their newborn amid tears of stress and joy. “We had imagined this kind of love but what we dreamt could never even touch the real thing.”
Porter and Etheridge made their “biggest announcement yet” in November 2023. The then-parents-to-be shared photos of Porter’s growing baby bump as thy revealed Baby No. 1 was on the way. The couple married in 2020, when they secretly eloped in Nashville, Tennessee.
“Our sweet baby,” Porter wrote in her caption on Instagram when she announced her pregnancy and shared a few photos by Bree Marie Fish, capturing “our sweetest moment yet.” “We couldn’t be more excited to meet you, hold you, kiss your lil squishy cheeks and let Willa lick your lil toes. To say we are a tad nervous would be an understatement but what we know without an ounce of doubt is that we will love you more than anything in this entire world. We will never go back to who we were before. WE are now THREE (well 4 including the fur bean) forever. Love Mom and Dad.”