Jamie Lynn Spears tells of fears for her daughter's life during near-drowning

Evening Standard

Jamie-Lynn Spears told the harrowing story of how her eight year old daughter Maddie nearly drowned after falling off a boat into the family pond on the latest episode of I’m a Celebrity… last night.Trapped underwater for many minutes, poor Maddie had to be airlifted to hospital. It didn’t look good: a priest even read her last rights, but thank god, she survived. “Her body physically sat up, her spirit responded to it for whatever reason” Spears said. “That’s when I became Catholic.”

Transcript

00:00 I had a certain experience with me where I almost lost my oldest daughter and she was,

00:06 she drowned and we couldn't save her.

00:09 We tried really hard.

00:11 She was trapped under like a little side by side that we ride around our pond.

00:15 This is in 2017, so she's eight or nine or something like that.

00:19 Jamie Lynn really opened up, told us about the awful situation that happened to her where

00:27 her daughter nearly drowned.

00:30 It was the worst situation any parent could ever go through.

00:37 My father-in-law, my mother-in-law, me and my husband, we run to jump in to save her

00:41 and you kind of in that moment think, oh, this is not real, like she's going to pop

00:45 up, like she's like, this isn't real.

00:47 I could feel her arm and I'm jerking it and I couldn't get her up because it's a pretty

00:51 heavy machine.

00:53 And so in that moment, you think this is like, you know, logically she's been underwater

00:59 too long.

01:00 Nobody can live if they've been underwater this long.

01:02 You logically are thinking these things.

01:03 Then you hear the sirens come and thank God, my mother-in-law, first thing she did was

01:06 called 911.

01:07 She was caught in the safety netting.

01:10 And so when they got there, she was not alive and they took her from me and they incubated

01:17 her and then immediately she, I heard my mother-in-law, this is a hard part, I was sitting in the

01:22 rocks after I'd thrown up on myself and everything, so the adrenaline.

01:26 And then I heard her call my mom and say, Lynn, we've lost Maddie.

01:32 And then the firefighter came over like three seconds later and was like, we got a pulse,

01:36 we got a pulse.

01:38 And then they airlifted her and we go find her at the hospital, the whole thing, you

01:42 know, and she's hooked up on life support, breathing machines, all that.

01:46 And so they come in, one of our police, through their last rites.

01:51 And when they did, she, her body physically sat up.

01:55 Her spirit responded to it for whatever reason.

01:58 And little by little, every day, she was still on, you know, all that for a few more days.

02:03 And she got better and better every day and walked out of the hospital.

02:09 And this has no repercussions.

02:11 So that's when I became Catholic.

02:12 For about five minutes, I thought I had lost my daughter.

02:15 And then I was given the miracle of having her back.

02:17 Most people and most parents in my position wouldn't give anything for that.

02:21 Of course, you give yourself.

02:22 You give, exactly.

02:23 So like, for me, I think about it this way, like, how can I ever complain about anything

02:27 ever again?

02:28 I was given the biggest gift I could ever be given.

02:31 Yeah.

02:32 So that's what I, that's why I believe.

02:34 Well done.

02:35 You know what I mean?

02:36 And that biggest fear was, is that she was going to die thinking her mom wasn't trying

02:39 to save her.

02:40 Oh, I'm brave.

02:41 She didn't.

02:42 I know.

02:43 She's here now.

02:44 I know.

02:45 I'm not going to say anything.

02:46 It's just, it's like, I never want to sit here and cry about it because honestly, I'm

02:49 just thankful because that is not the case for 95% of people.

02:53 It's not.

02:55 It's not.

02:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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