Health & Pregnancy

Alanis Morissette Gets Ready to Rock Her Baby

Rock icon Alanis Morissette is singing a new song these days. She's recently married, very pregnant, and can't wipe the smile off her face -- even while battling morning sickness and sleepless nights.

Morissette is feeling about as far removed from the angsty love songs that first propelled her to international fame in 1995 as a formerly lovelorn musician can possibly get. First, she's happily married. She tied the knot last May to rapper Mario "MC Souleye" Treadway in a quiet ceremony in their Brentwood, Calif., home. Second, she's pregnant. Very pregnant. Her baby boy is due to arrive any day now (as of press time). And it's written all over her face: The woman is totally blissed out.

"There are so many reasons for the bliss," she tells WebMD. "Not the least of which is the hormonal blasting of miracle juice that's going on with the pregnancy alone!" She laughs. "But also, the lifestyle change has been revelatory for me. I've always been a workaholic. During the first trimester, and definitely in the third…" She trails off, reflecting briefly before finishing her thought: "If I were to continue to work on the ton of projects I'm doing and log that many hours a day…I just couldn't do it."

Morissette: Musician, Actress, Writer

Morissette, 36, is the proud recipient of seven Grammy awards and 12 Juno awards -- her latest Juno came in 2009 for her most recent album, Flavors of Entanglement -- and has set more than her share of records on the Billboard charts. She's also the emotionally edgy voice behind the world's No. 1-selling debut album overall by a female musician: Her smash opus for the brokenhearted, Jagged Little Pill, has sold more than 30 million copies.

She's prolific in other ways, too. Cable fans know Morissette as a regular on HBO, Showtime, and FX networks, putting in guest acting appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Sex and the City, plus making regular work of Weeds. She's also appeared on Nip/Tuck and has done a stint in two off-Broadway plays. If this weren't enough, she's in the process of writing a book she describes as an eclectic mix of "photographs, travelogue, essays, philosophy." And she's doing all this while working on her next album, naturally.

"I was a bit of a train wreck at the beginning," she admits, referring to the first trimester of her pregnancy. "[But] I look back on it now and I'm grateful. …Even though it was physically challenging, it's been a 'get out of jail free' card for me from the workaholic lifestyle. …It's allowed me to slow down for the first time in my life. I wouldn't slow down in the past without some pointed reason. My own well-being wasn't reason enough."

In other words the self-avowed "night owl" -- whose long-held approach to creativity was to stay up until 4 a.m. to get the lyrics written, new tracks laid down, lines memorized, or paragraphs finessed -- hit a physical wall. "I realized my timeline is not necessarily the baby's timeline," she says. "I envisioned the book being done before the baby came. I'm still writing every day but not late at night, like I once did. I have to be OK with finishing the book sometime next year."