Celebrity Celebrity Family Celebrity Tragedy Jamie Lynn Spears Emotionally Recalls Daughter Maddie's Near-Fatal ATV Crash: 'My Biggest Fear' The mom of two recalls the toughest time in her life By Angela Andaloro Angela Andaloro Angela Andaloro is a Society & Culture Staff Writer at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, and LittleThings. People Editorial Guidelines Published on November 27, 2023 05:15PM EST Jamie Lynn Spears and daughter Maddie. Photo: Jamie Lynn Spears/Instagram Jamie Lynn Spears is looking back at one of her hardest times as a parent. On the latest episode of the U.K. reality TV show, I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, the 32-year-old actress recalled the serious 2017 ATV accident that left her older daughter, Maddie, in a coma. Recalling what happened to her castmates, Spears 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," she recalled, explaining that the now 15-year-old was "8 or 9" at the time. "My father-in-law, my mother-in-law, me and my husband, we run to jump in to save her and you kind of — in that moment you think, 'This is not real. She’s going to pop up, this isn’t real," she continued. "I could feel her arm, and I’m jerking it, I couldn’t get her up because it’s a pretty heavy machine. In that moment you think, you know logically she’s been underwater too long." Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Jamie Lynn Spears and daughter Maddie. Jamie Lynn Spears/Instagram Jamie Lynn Spears Shares Chilling Details from Daughter Maddie's Near-Death Accident in New Memoir "Nobody can live if they’ve been underwater this long. You logically are thinking these things," she noted. "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 recalled sitting there distraught and covered in vomit as she heard her mother-in-law call her own mom, and say, "'Lynne, we've lost Maddie.'" Moments later, a firefighter let Spears know Maddie did have a pulse. Jamie Lynn spears with husband Jamie Watson and daughters Maddie and Ivey. Jamie Lynn Spears/instagram "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," the mom of two — who shares Maddie with ex Casey Aldridge and daughter Ivey Joan, 5, with husband Jamie Watson — said. "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." Spears tearfully admitted, “My biggest fear was she was going to die thinking her momma wasn’t trying to save her.”