Reflecting on her road to parenthood. Jamie Lynn Spears opened up about her reaction to finding out she was pregnant at age 16.
“You have your first love, or what you call love in high school. You think it’s forever, and then oh, my gosh, I’m pregnant,” the Zoey 101 alum, 29, told Nylon on Monday, October 19. “‘I am mortified to have to tell my parents this and my family this.’ … That was all I was thinking about: ‘These are the people I love that I have to tell, and also, I’m pregnant. There’s a human being growing inside of me, and I’m so young, I’m almost a baby myself.’”
The actress explained her choice to “hide away for a little bit” in 2007, saying, “I got me a little house. I put a big gate up around it, and I was like, ‘I’m going to stay here, raise my baby and figure this out because this is real life. I’ve put myself in this situation, I’m not condoning it or saying it’s right, but these are the cards that I have to play.’ And I tried to do the best that I could.”
The Mississippi native’s mom, Lynne Spears, praised her youngest daughter for grasping “motherhood immediately and fully” after Maddie, now 12, arrived in 2008.
“[Jamie was] focused only on trying to make the best decisions for her baby and herself, and in that order,” the Through the Storm author, 65, gushed.
The Sweet Magnolias star split from Maddie’s father, Casey Aldridge, in 2009, and went on to marry Jamie Watson five years later. The couple share daughter Ivey, 2. Her big sister, Britney Spears, is the mother of sons Sean Preston, 15, and Jayden, 14, with her ex-husband Kevin Federline.
In May, Jamie spoke candidly about being “under a microscope” during her first pregnancy.
“I remember being 16 years old, being pregnant in a small town. And then on top of it, the whole world was watching,” the country singer told The Hollywood Reporter at the time. “At the end of the day, you have to stand up for what’s best for you and your baby. I think that’s what people didn’t understand about me and my first pregnancy. Every decision I made came from a place of wanting to do right by her and being the best mom that I could be.”
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