Jamie Lynn Spears — sister of Britney Spears — opened up for the first time about her daughter’s life-threatening accident in 2017 when the ATV she was riding in Kentwood, Louisiana, flipped over into a pond.
“I’ve never really talked about it publicly,” the 29-year-old actress shared during an interview with “Better Together with Maria Menounos,” about her daughter Maddie Briann Aldridge’s near fatal ATV accident when she was 8. The comments were noted by Fox News in an article published Friday. (RELATED: Britney Spears’ Best All-Time Performance Moments [SLIDESHOW])
“So, without going into too much detail, we were sitting there watching her with every safety measure that could be taken when she somehow or another, drove into the water,” she added. (RELATED: Britney Spears Shows Off Some Wild Dance Moves At Home)
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Spears‘s sister shared how she and her husband dove into the water, but were unable at first to bring her up.
“When we were finally able to get her out of the water … and the first responders took her from me, we thought she was gone,” the actress shared, while wiping away tears. “We thought we lost our daughter.”
“There’s nothing worse than looking at your child and just feeling like you’ve failed her,” she added. “And I didn’t want her to think that I couldn’t save her, that I didn’t try to save her. That was my biggest worry.”
A firefighter then managed to get her daughter’s pulse going and she was immediately airlifted to the hospital.
It was while Maddie was in the ICU that Jamie went to get a priest to conduct the last rites.
“It wasn’t looking good,” Spears explained. “She wasn’t responding to anything and so it was not looking good for us.”
But then, she said something changed.
“He went to, you know, put the oil on her and read the rites and she sat up and started kicking, and her hands started grabbing at all the things,” she added. “They came and they tied her down. Then she went back into complete- Whatever. That was our first sign that she was there.”
Her daughter then would go on to make a full recovery and the whole experience, Spears said, changed her life.
“In that moment I just … spiritually, mentally, everything changed,” Jamie said. “I’ve faced my worst fear now. What else can I mess up or do wrong that will be as horrible as that? Nothing. There’s nothing. God gave me the blessing of giving me my daughter back. I lost her and I got her back.”
“So I don’t get to make any excuses,” she added. “I’ve been given the best, the biggest blessing you can be given. I’m not allowed to waste a day on this earth complaining or being ungrateful.”