Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig thelad.net. NS
Answer
thelad.net. 5 NS ns-534.awsdns-02.net.
thelad.net. 5 NS ns-192.awsdns-24.com.
thelad.net. 5 NS ns-1848.awsdns-39.co.uk.
thelad.net. 5 NS ns-1489.awsdns-58.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0