Jamie Lynn Spears Reveals She Hid Her Teen Pregnancy From Sister Britney

Jamie Lynn Spears is opening up about her first pregnancy in her new memoir Things I Should Have Said, revealing that she actually kept the news of her upcoming baby a secret from her own sister, Britney Spears. 

“There was a whole lot of fighting going on between everyone involved. The entire Spears team was already caught up in my sister’s PR difficulties, and everyone around me just wanted to make this ‘issue’ disappear,” Jamie Lynn writes, per People. “My family and management pulled me out of school until they could figure out what to do next. They took my smartphone away, fearing the news would get out, and insisted that no one share any information with anyone, especially the press.”

Jamie Lynn became pregnant in 2007 at the age of 16. She delivered her first daughter Maddie the following year. Maddie, now 13 years old, became a big sister three years ago after the Zoey 101 alum gave birth to a second daughter, Ivey.

“There was lots of chatter, but none of it felt right to me,” she writes. “It will kill your career. You are just too young. You don’t know what you’re doing. There are pills you can take. We can help you take care of this problem. Think about what you’re doing to your family. Doesn’t the family have enough to deal with? I know a doctor. There are procedures that remedy mistakes like this. You don’t have to do this.”

She continues in the excerpt, writing that it was an especially difficult time due to the fact that she was kept hidden in her room in an attempt to keep the news of her pregnancy a secret. Her team and others around her at the time made attempts to convince her that having a baby at her age would be a mistake –– something she says only “reinforced” her decision. After making her ultimate decision, her family still wasn’t ready to make the announcement to the world. 

“My team believed everyone outside of the inner circle was a potential threat. They went so far as hiding my pregnancy from my sister, claiming, ‘It’s too risky to tell Britney about the baby,’” Jamie Lynn writes. “I needed her more than ever and she wasn’t able help me in my most vulnerable time. Britney’s condition was spiraling into something more concerning. They were concerned her instability at that time made her untrustworthy.”

“I went along with what my team told me to do because I was a minor and didn’t want to create any more issues,” she continues. “Britney learned of the pregnancy when the article was released. To this day, the hurt of not being able to tell my sister myself lingers.”

She claims due to the turmoil that her pop star sister was dealing with at the time, the two siblings were kept apart from each other without much conversation between the two.”Britney was in the midst of her own crisis, and because we were isolated from each other, our communication was nonexistent,” Jamie Lynn writes. “… Momma contacted the team to discuss the issues. They had real concerns about me marrying my boyfriend and giving him access to all of my earnings. Simultaneously, my sister was experiencing her own breakdown, and media speculation about her wellness and our family already had the paparazzi swarming.”