Jamie Lynn Spears Celebrates ‘Miracle Anniversary’ of Daughter’s Near-Death Accident
By Movieguide® Contributor
Jamie Lynn Spears took to Instagram on Monday to share what she calls her “Miracle Anniversary,” referring to her daughter’s ATV crash seven years ago that almost took her life.
“Today is our #MIRACLEANNIVERSARY ?️ Every year that passes and I watch my daughter grow up, the more I realize how very blessed we are, and never want to take that for granted,” Spears wrote. “Again, thank you to all the healthcare professionals who made the life saving decisions, and thank you to each and every person who prayed for our baby girl. Thinking of Father Mark today, although he is in heaven now, he was always like an angel on earth for us, especially on this day 7 years ago.”
With the caption, Spears shared several photos from the hospital during that time, including one of her cuddled up with her daughter in a hospital bed.
“Can’t wait to see what God has in store for Maddie. She is truly a miracle!” one user commented.
“Our very own living and breathing Miracle Maddie!!!! This day is forever etched in our minds! Thank you, God for our sweet and beautiful miracle!!!!” another user said.
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“In February 2017, Maddie crashed a Polaris ATV into a pond at her stepdad Jamie Watson’s family’s home in Louisiana, according to a statement by Sheriff Daniel Edwards at the time. The then-8-year-old was steering the popular off-road vehicle to avoid running over a drainage ditch,” USAToday reported of the accident.
Spears previously detailed the traumatic experience in her memoir “Things I Should Have Said.”
“The first responder got in the water just as the ATV was dragged from the pond. He lifted Maddie out and laid her down next to me. She was unconscious, her body distended, face swollen and eerily blue. The EMT started CPR. Nothing was working… Wordlessly the EMT grabbed her lifeless body, flipped it over and began pounding on her back. I knew what I had just witnessed. My daughter’s lifeless body,” she said.
The Spears family had a priest come pray for Maddie in the hospital, and the next day things began to turn around for the better.
“… Maddie still wasn’t responding to the manual pain and reflex assessments. I looked up and my eyes widened at the wide-eyed expression on Jamie’s [Watson] face. He was looking into Maddie’s open eyes. She painstakingly raised her finger with the pulse oximeter on it and pointed the small red light at Jamie. He smiled and said, ‘E.T., phone home.’ She held her finger up for a moment longer and he said it again. ‘E.T., phone home.’ At that moment I knew she was definitely coming back to us,” Spears wrote.
“The hardest chapter to write and to read is the one about the accident,” she said. “It has a wonderful ending, but you can’t help, every time you’re reading it, to go back to that… It’s still hard to even talk about it.”
Spears said that the experience helped her find faith. Movieguide® reported:
ZOEY 101 star Jamie Lynn Spears opened up about how one of the scariest moments she’s experienced as a mother led her to faith.
“I almost lost my oldest daughter…She drowned, and we couldn’t save her,” Spears said on an episode of I’M A CELEBRITY…GET ME OUT OF HERE, per PEOPLE…
“They airlifted her. She’s hooked up on life support, breathing machines and all that…they come in, [bring] a priest to read her her last rites, and when they did, her body physically sat up,” Spears remembered.
“Her spirit responded to it for whatever reason. She got better and better every day and walked out of the hospital. [She] has no repercussions. So that’s when I became Catholic. For about five minutes I thought I’d lost my daughter and then I was given the miracle of having her back,” she said.
She previously told PEOPLE how the accident changed her perspective on life.
“You have a lot more gratitude,” Spears explained. “That was a miracle. That should be heard. There’s a lot of dark things in this world today, and I think that putting something out there like that, that is so wonderful, is something that should be shared.”
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