Britney Spears has 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 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 2 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 petrol station, the star was placed under a conservatorship headed by her father Jamie Spears, which ultimately lasted nearly 14 years.
Fans had long sounded alarm that the 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 "traumatised."
Britney Spears posted on Instagram about her pregnancy. Credit: Chris Pizzello/AP
'I want to have the real deal'
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.
Spears fought to end the conservatorship that controlled vast aspects of her life. Source: AP / Chris Pizzello/AP
The formal end to the guardianship in November 2021 came after the pop star's father Jamie Spears was removed from his position in charge of her finances and estate at a hearing in September.
She is already mother to two teen sons, Sean and Jayden, with her ex-husband Kevin Federline.
In her post Monday Spears also opened up about struggles with perinatal depression during previous pregnancies, saying it was "absolutely horrible".
"Women didn't talk about it back then... some people considered it dangerous if a woman complained like that with a baby inside her... but now women talk about it everyday... thank Jesus we don't have to keep that pain a reserved proper secret," the pop star wrote.
