The Next Big: Stand-Up Mom

Meshelle Foreman Shields knows two things for sure: that she's carrying a boy, and that she's destined to be Baltimore's next big star. Shields, 37, is vying to become a contestant on Nick at Nite's Search for the Funniest Mom in America 3, a reality series—"sort of like The Apprentice for comics," Shields explains—that offers a grand prize of $50,000 and some TV opportunities. The stand-up comic (who got her start in fellow funny Baltimorean Mo'Nique's downtown comedy club) and soon-to-be-third-time-mother grew up as one of the few African Americans in a primarily Jewish neighborhood of Milford Mill with her mother and a gaggle of "quasi-gangster" uncles. Now, she's "waitin' like a crack fiend" in her cozy Bolton Hill home (with husband LaMarr Darnell Shields and their two daughters) to find out if she made it to the show's final auditions in L.A. If she's in, she'll share a Real World-style house with a handful of competitors—in the final days of her pregnancy. "I'm walking away with victory out of this thing," she says. "It's never gonna be the same after the show airs in April. That's why I'm like, 'hold on!'" she laughs, holding her basketball-sized tummy. "Mommy's gonna win one for the team!"