It’s safe to say that Jamie Lynn Spears has been through a lot over the course of her unconventional life, with the 32-year-old actor opening up about much of it as she currently appears in theI’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! jungle. And now, as the star settles into camp life with her fellow celebrities, we’re learning more about her family life than ever before.
Jamie Lynn has two children - Maddie, 15 and Ivey Joan, five – whom she raises with husband Jamie Watson. Watson is the proprietor of Advanced Media Partners, a communications firm based in Louisiana. The couple met in 2010 and were married in 2014. Sharing her emotional distress at missing her family many times this season, it’s clear Jamie Lynn has a difficult time being away from her daughters – and we don’t blame her, the family have been through an awful lot.
In 2017, Jamie Lynn’s eldest daughter Maddie almost drowned after a near-fatal ATV accident. What is an ATV? An all-terrain vehicle, much like a quad bike. Maddie narrowly survived after the ATV became submerged in a pond with Maddie strapped to it.
What happened when Jamie Lynn Spears daughter Maddie almost drowned?
In her memoir, Things I Should Have Said, Jamie Lynn opens up about the terrible ordeal and Maddie’s miraculous survival. Maddie has been out riding the ATV at Jamie Watson’s parents’ house when she somehow ended up driving into a pond on the property and became submerged.
‘The first responder got in the water just as the ATV was dragged from the pond,’ Jamie wrote of the incident. ‘He lifted Maddie out and laid her down next to me. She was unconscious, her body distended, face swollen and eerily blue.’
After CPR didn’t work on Maddie, Jamie describes the EMT flipping Maddie over and pounding on her back. Maddie was still unresponsive when she was moved into the ambulance, and Jamie says her whole family thought she had died until one of the emergency service workers announced they had found a pulse.
‘Maddie was intubated [in hospital] and endless tubes and lines extended from every part of her,’ Jamie wrote. ‘There were no fewer than five machines performing different functions. The lead doctor spoke frankly. "We can't say much at the moment. Her scans don't show any damage or injury, but she's not responding to our pain or reflex tests. The next twenty-four hours are crucial and will tell us more."’
When Maddie eventually woke, she was put into a medically induced coma. She eventually made a full recovery, suffering no brain damage. After the release of her book, Jamie Lynn opened up that the hardest chapter to write was the one on her daughter’s ATV accident.