Fantasia Barrino is expecting.
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The former American Idol winner and Fantasia For Real star has announced she is pregnant with her second child.
"You are the [people] that I share this news with," Barrino told the crowd while performing at the opening of an apartment complex in Jacksonville, FL on Sunday (watch a video of the announcement below).
"And I share this with you because I can relate to you. And for a while, I walked around saying, 'What will they say and what will they think about me?' But now I tell you, I don't live my life for folk! So, this child that I carry, God has given me this child. And I don't have to hide it from none of y'all!
The 27-year-old -- who won American Idol's third season in 2004 and has a 9-year-old daughter from a prior relationship -- did not reveal the identity of the father-to-be.
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Last year, she made headlines went she admitted she deliberately overdosed on aspirin and sleep medication in an attempt to commit suicide.
The overdose had followed widespread media reports of a recently-filed court complaint in which the estranged wife of Antwaun Cook, a North Carolina man Barrino had been dating for nearly a year, had accused the Idol winner of having an affair and making sex tapes with Cook.
While the case didn't involve Barrino directly, it was reportedly the potential first step in a lawsuit that could cost her millions since North Carolina is one of seven states in which a "home wrecker" can be sued for breaking up a marriage.
Barrino's manager had blamed the overdose on the fact that Barrino -- who claimed she wasn't aware that Cook was still with his wife while she was dating him -- had been "totally overwhelmed by the lawsuit and the media attention," however she subsequently claimed the situation was more complicated than that.
"Everybody thinks I tried to harm myself over a man, but you know I've been in a lot of bad relationships," she told Good Morning America in an August 2010 interview.
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"That had somewhat to do with it, because it was so heavy, it was brand-new information [and] I was already going through so much. But I think it was just six years of everything, of my holding all that stuff on the inside and not letting it out."
"I think I was just overloaded with everything, with carrying six years of so much... it just became heavy for me to the point where I wanted to be away from the noise," she said.
"Even when I stepped on the Idol stage, I caught so much drama about being a young mom, not having my high school diploma, the way I spoke, me taking off my shoes -- it was always something wrong with me and they kept trying to point out little things but I fought through that and I won the Idol. Coming after that, I did my Lifetime movie and I did my book and I spoke about just my life before then [and] the struggles that I went through to get to where I am today and they picked out things about that that they didn't like and they lashed out... the [home] foreclosure."
"There's just so many things that I had to deal with -- me almost losing my whole career, and not having management, and lawyers and everybody who said they had my back and nobody taking care of me, me taking care of my whole family. So much that people don't understand and they just see the glitz and the glamour."
About The Author: Steven Rogers