"The media destroyed me when I first became a mother."
Britney Spears is getting real about her pregnancy anxieties, 16 years on from becoming a mother for the first time.
The singer, who is expecting a baby with her
fiancé Sam Asghari, shared how her experience of being judged whilst raising her now-teenage sons in the 2000s has only made her more nervous this time around.
This will be her third child and Sam's first. Britney is already mum to Sean, 16, and Jayden, 15.
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"With a baby on the way my thought this morning was 'I'm so scared to make a mistake... Will I be thoughtful enough??? Will I be instinctive enough???'" the singer wrote in a lengthy
Instagram post.
Comparing her parenting instincts to those of her own mother, Britney said that while "I always got judged and was told I was doing the wrong thing," she was more attentive to her kids' needs than her mother was to hers.
The pop star recalled a time when she had a fever as a child and claimed her mum only came to check on her once, adding that she "knocked the fever myself". In contrast, when Jayden had an "extremely high" temperature at the age of nine, Britney said she "picked him up like a baby" and bathed him, used a cold compress to reduce his fever and slept with him to look after him that night.
"When he woke up... he was eating pancakes like nothing happened!!!" she recalled, later mentioning that she wonders if she'll still have the same instincts she had when it came to making her young son better.
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"God knows I'm no saint but the media destroyed me when I first became a mother. My first record came out when I was 16 and I got pregnant at 24... I was a baby raising 2 babies with 17 cars outside my house!!! I didn’t know how to play the game..."
Britney added that she knows how it looked "from the outside" and that the public formed opinions of her and her parenting based on "what was said in the news".
"The media has always been EXTREMELY rude to me... so I woke up this morning saying to myself ‘do I need to do a podcast during this pregnancy instead of just therapy???’" she continued, joking that she doesn't want to be "an angry pregnant person eating donuts" every morning.
"Then I thought about it... It’s going to be ok!!!” she wrote. “Just be me and stop trying so hard !!!”
The hitmaker went on to say she's now taking the time to relax and enjoy finding herself through all the "little things" she didn't get to fully embrace throughout the duration of her conservatorship – including the "best sex ever".
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"Sex is great when you’re pregnant," Britney shared, alongside her signature shrugging emojis.
We couldn't be happier for her if we tried.
