Jamie Lynn Spears has opened up on I’m A Celebrity about how her daughter nearly drowned in a freak accident at their home pond.
In Monday’s episode of the ITV reality show, the actress and singer recalled the incident when her eldest daughter Maddie got caught under a quad bike when she was a child.
Spears said the experience led her to become Catholic as she feels it was “a miracle” that Maddie survived.
‘How can I ever complain about anything ever again? I was given the biggest gift’ 😢 #ImACeleb pic.twitter.com/DxhWQVHOSr
— I'm A Celebrity… (@imacelebrity) November 27, 2023
She said: “I almost lost my oldest daughter… she drowned and we couldn’t save her. We tried really hard.
“She was trapped under a little side-by-side that we ride around our pond. This is in 2017 so she was eight or nine, something like that.”
Spears recalled how she, her husband and her parents-in-law rushed to save Maddie before emergency teams arrived.
“I could feel her arm, and I’m jerking it, I couldn’t get her up because it’s a pretty heavy machine,” she said.
“In that moment you think, you know logically she’s been under water too long… nobody can live if they’ve been under water this long. You logically are thinking these things.
“Then you hear the sirens coming. Thank god my mother-in-law, first thing she did was call 911.
“(Maddie) was caught in the safety netting. So when they got there, she was not alive. They took her from me and they intubated her.”
Spears said she overheard her mother-in-law tell her mother on the phone that they had “lost Maddie” before a firefighter came over to reveal emergency workers had found a pulse.
She said her daughter was airlifted to hospital and put on life support, but when the last rites were read, Spears said Maddie’s body “physically sat up”.
“Her spirit responded to it for whatever reason… She got better and better every day and walked out of the hospital and this has no repercussions,” she added.
“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.
“Most people and most parents in life would give anything for that. For me, I think about it this way: how could I ever complain about anything ever again? I was given the biggest gift you could ever be given.”
Spears also revealed her older sister Britney used to have crawfish sent to her overnight in ice chests after she found fame as a popstar, because she was such a big fan of the seafood.
Fellow campmate Sam Thompson discussed what he imagined Spears’ home life was like when she was growing up in the southern US, including the family gathering to eat crawfish.
Spears said: “We’re from Louisiana, we love crawfish. My sister and all of us, we love crawfish so much.
“But she (Britney) only wanted the good crawfish. So the company in Louisiana would have them overnighted in a box for her, in an ice chest.
“Even in Vegas, she’d have crawfish, (she’d be) eating crawfish in the Elton John suite.”
I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! continues on Tuesday at 9pm.