Melissa and Tammy Etheridge Talk About Their Family

Melissa and Tammy Etheridge recently spoke to US Weekly about their latest additions. Here's some of the highlights from the interview:

On the Pregnancy and Their Relationship:
Tammy: We did some fertility treatments -- that’s rough.
Melissa: IVF is so painful, that when you’re waiting to see if you’re pregnant, it feels like you’re pregnant anyway because of all the hormones. It’s a really hard thing for a woman to go through. The first month she was recovering from the IVF and then she had morning sickness.
Tammy: I was a mess. I was pretty much in bed. We couldn’t tell the kids that I was pregnant because we needed to get through the first trimester. We’re trying to carry on as if I’m just not feeling very well. I’m in bed all the time. I’m really sick, I couldn’t eat anything except Taco Bell.




On Their Choice of Baby Names:
Tammy: It’s Steven, he’s the godfather and Marcy Miller, she was my 8th grade music teacher. That’s Miller’s first name. She then became like this mentor in life. She’s their godmother. She’s still a music teacher. She’s not a mother figure per se, she’s more of a spiritual guide in life and she filled in a lot of holes when I was growing up and took me under her wing when life got a little rough and stayed in touch and supported me the whole time.

Melissa: My father’s name was John, he died about 15 years ago, and he was very close to me. He was the one that would take me to the bars I was playing in with the bands and he would sit there and watch. I wanted to name our children after him. At first, if it was going to be a boy it was going to be John, and then we said "what if it’s a girl?" thinking we were just
going to have one. And we said Johnny. Another woman who’s very important to [Tammy] in her life is named Rose and we said Johnny Rose. I really fell in love with the name. So when it was twins I could have named the boy John, but I liked the name Johnny Rose so much that I said let’s name the girl Johnnie Rose and the boy Miller Steven.



On Putting Family First:
Melissa: Career is such a small part of what we are right now. Her career is different from mine. I went from selling less than a million copies ‘til I came out then I sold six million -- [being gay] actually amplified my career.

Tammy: I looked at what I had in front of me which was this family to be built with this woman with two tiny babies. And I was like "Okay, if this is going to get serious with this woman, I’m going to become a step-parent which means that I need to get my act together." There came a point where I could keep auditioning and keep going at my career the way I had been and miss out on building a family with the two kids, or I could focus on building a family and think about my career later. I ended up packing lunches and doing laundry and making sure everybody’s rain boots fit, and that ended up being so fulfilling that I didn’t focus on my career. And then I focused on it, and I did the L Word. And then I went back and was taking care of the kids. And then I focused on it again and I got Committed and then it got canceled and Melissa got cancer, so I stopped focusing on it again. Every time I’ve focused on it, it doesn’t seem to have hurt me at all.

Check out this week's issue of US Weekly for the rest of the article.