Britney Spears, Newly Free, Says She Is Pregnant

Britney Spears on Monday announced she is pregnant with her third child, five months after a judge ended the controversial guardianship the pop icon said barred her from having more children.

"I got a pregnancy test... and uhhhhh well... I am having a baby," the 40-year-old said on Instagram.

A Los Angeles judge in November dissolved the conservatorship long overseen by Spears' father -- an arrangement the singer said had prevented her from having a contraceptive IUD removed despite her desire for more kids.

Spears' representatives did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.

"I thought 'Geez... what happened to my stomach???'" Spears wrote, saying that her 28-year-old partner Sam Asghari, whom she has started referring to online as her "husband," speculated she was "food pregnant."

"It's growing!!! If two are in there... I might just loose it," added the singer, prompting online chatter that she may be expecting twins.

After a highly public 2007 breakdown, when Spears attacked a paparazzo's car at a gas station, the star was placed under a conservatorship headed by her father Jamie Spears, which ultimately lasted nearly 14 years.

Fans had long sounded alarmed that the "...Baby One More Time" singer was unhappy with her father as guardian, and in June 2021 she asked a Los Angeles judge to end the legal arrangement that had left her "traumatized."

Her allegation that the conservatorship was preventing her from removing a contraceptive IUD -- despite her wanting to have authority over her own birth control method in order to get pregnant -- sparked outrage from reproductive rights groups and her fans, many of whom were already involved in the fervent #FreeBritney movement.

"I would like to progressively move forward, and I want to have the real deal," Spears told the court in a bombshell hearing last summer.

"I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I have an (IUD) inside of myself so I don't get pregnant. They don't want me to have children -- any more children," she said during the gripping 20-minute statement.

The formal end to the guardianship in November 2021 came after the pop phenom's father Jamie Spears was removed from his position in charge of her finances and estate at a hearing in September.