Carrie Underwood details facial injury that needed at least 40 stitches for first time, feared it would scare her son

Carrie Underwood went into detail for the first time about the gruesome accident she suffered last November that left her needing at least 40 stitches on her face.

The singer – who kept a low profile for months following the accident – revealed the injury she sustained occurred “around (her) mouth” and said it took place when she fell on a set of steps while walking her dogs.

“I went to catch myself and I just missed a step,” Underwood said Thursday on the radio program “The Bobby Bones Show.”

“If I had fallen anywhere else I would have been perfectly fine, but it was one step that messed everything up.”

Underwood also suffered a broken right wrist in the fall. She says she managed to hold onto the dogs’ leashes with her left hand during the fall, and tried to catch herself with the other.

“I was worried he would be scared of me,” Underwood said. “But now if I put makeup on, he’s like, ‘Mommy, your boo-boo’s all gone.’”

Underwood originally only informed fans about her broken wrist after the accident, but later opened up in a January post to her website that she also needed “between 40 and 50 stitches” on her face.

“You just don’t know how things are going to heal or end up,” Underwood told host Bobby Bones on Thursday. “It was important to me as I started resuming my life again and going to the grocery store and taking my kid and stuff like that I was like, ‘OK, someone is gonna creep on me at the grocery store.’ And people are going to be like, ‘What happened?’ when they post it on Instagram.”

Underwood, who is married to NHL player Mike Fischer, stayed out of the spotlight following the fall, and refrained from posting photos of herself to social media until earlier this month when he shared a pair of pictures, including one showing her entire face.

She noted that she was wearing makeup over the injury during her appearance on Bones’ show, but says she feels fortunate that she’s been able to heal up well.

“I was lucky that when it happened, everything was kind of shutting down in the music world and we had the holidays and stuff like that,” she said. “But I was at a point where I didn’t know how things were going to end up. I didn’t know what was going to go on and didn’t know what it was going to heal like.”

Underwood made her return to the limelight over the weekend when she performed at the Academy of Country Music Awards, where she sang her new single “Cry Pretty.”