Britney Spears says she is pregnant

Los Angeles

BRITNEY Spears on Monday announced she is pregnant with her third child, 5 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 intrauterine device (IUD) removed despite her desire for more kids.

"I thought 'Geez... what happened to my stomach???'" Spears wrote, saying that her 28-year-old partner Sam Asghari 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, the star was placed under a conservatorship headed by her father Jamie Spears, which lasted nearly 14 years. Fans had long sounded alarm 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 "traumatised". Her allegation that the conservatorship was preventing her from removing a contraceptive IUD 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." AFP