Los Angeles (E! Online) - Nicole Richie isnt just too cool for school. Shes also too pregnant for it.
The eight-months-preggers socialite has been granted a leave of absence from her intensive, court-mandated alcohol-education course due to concerns for her safety in the wake of her ever-burgeoning medical condition. (Thatd be the bun in the oven.)
Richie completed about 3 months of the 18-month program.
Both Richies rep and officials say the starlet is not receiving any special treatment. The option of taking temporary leave of the class, Santa Barbaras SB 38 Multiple Offender Drinking Driver Program, is offered to any enrollees with a medical condition.
Richie signed up for the course in September and is one of approximately 340 multiple-DUI offenders enrolled there. Upon completion, she will be eligible to get her drivers license reissued by the state.
Richie, whose actual sentence mandated only a three-week course, is expected to resume participation in the program sometime after she gives birth early next year.
She was arrested Dec. 11, 2006, after allegedly driving the wrong way on an L.A. freeway, then stopping in the HOV lane.
On July 27, she was ordered to spend four days in jail, fined $2,048, placed on three years probation and told to complete a minimum three-week alcohol-education course after pleading no contest to a drunken-driving charge, her second DUI.
She wound up serving just 82 minutes in lockup at the Century Regional Detention Facility.
Since her arrest, Richie has taken full responsibliity for the slipup and retreated from her party-hearty past.
I have to set the right examples. I want to be the best parent I can be. I would really want to be someone my child would look up to, Richie told ABC News Diane Sawyer in August.
On Monday, Richie and fianc Joel Madden launched the Richie-Madden Childrens Foundation, which aims to spread the neonatal wealth with other less fortunate expectant parents.
