There aren’t many things stronger than the maternal instinct. And the instinct only gets stronger when disaster strikes.
Scroll down to read the story of a selfless Texas mother, the miracle that saved her baby when they both fell from a bridge, and what keeps her going as she fights to get back on her feet.
The accident occurred when 23-year-old mom Jennifer Duncan was driving across a bridge while bringing her son to kindergarten.
The Texas mom got in a minor crash and then pulled her car over to the side of the road. Then she took her 8-month-old son Daniel from his car seat and held him while they waited for help.
But what should have been a safe place to wait proved to extremely dangerous. Minutes later, another car crashed into Jennifer’s parked car, which in turn came rushing toward the mother and her son.
Jennifer and Daniel were knocked off the bridge and fell some 30 feet (9m) to the ground under the bridge.
In a split second, Jennifer instinctively took hold of her son and acted as a human shield to protect him from the impact of hitting the ground.
“I just tried to grab on as tight as I could to him and realized that keeping him safe was my main concern,” Jennifer said.
The mother’s strategy worked. Despite falling a seemingly unsurvivable distance, her baby landed without a scratch.
Jennifer’s heroic and self-sacrificing effort, however, had consequences. She was alive when the paramedics found her, but barely.
The corageous mother was taken to the hospital with a shattered pelvis, nine fractured bones in her spine, fractured leg bones, and internal bleeding in her spleen.
Jennifer spent two months recovering in the hospital and a month in rehab. She also underwent 14 operations in seven months, and her doctors were forced to amputate one of her legs.
Friends of the family started a fund for Jennifer and her son, to among other things, cover the expensive hospital costs.
And as of this writing, strangers from around the world have donated $20,00 to Jennifer’s cause, though more is needed.
According to Jennifer, the most difficult thing she’s had to cope with was being unable to pick up and hold her son.
But her desire to one day be able to embrace him was what gave her the strength she needed to keep fighting.
Please watch this video to see this amazingly strong mother talk about the accident and her recovery:
Is there a love greater than the love a mother feels for her child?
This 23-year-old mother deserves all the likes and shares we can give her!
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