Pregnant Michigan Woman Saved After Jumping From 2-Story Window to Escape Fire

Rachel Standfest deserves an award for mother of the year. 

When the barnhouse that the Michigan native and her husband Travis Standfest were staying in caught fire last May, Rachel jumped from a second-story window to escape—despite being 36 weeks pregnant.

"The last thing I remember is Travis punching out the screen window, and I could see my mom in the driveway yelling, 'Get out now,'" Rachel told People in an interview published May 23. "And that's the last thing I remember for probably two weeks."

And while the courageous move saved her and her baby's life, the 26-year-old admitted that her only thought at the time was "fight or flight."

"In the moment, I know I was scared," Rachel explained. "I know both of us had a moment of, 'Oh my word, is this it? Are we going to die?' But I wasn't scared to jump out because I knew that's what we had to do to survive."

After making the nearly 20-foot jump, Rachel was rushed to the hospital, where their daughter, Brynlee Rose, was born through an emergency C-section. 

"They made sure Brynlee was safe first, and then they did it in the trauma bay," Rachel recounted. "They had to cut through a third-degree burn to do that, and they had never done that before, so they took Brynlee and made sure she was okay. And then the trauma team took over and started addressing my burns."

Once their daughter was in safe hands, the couple remained in the hospital for their own treatment for 29 days—a recovery time that Travis, 25, said doctors were "blown away by."

"One of our surgeons practically jumped for joy the last time I saw him before my surgery," Travis recalled to People, "because he could not believe the speed of my recovery." 

And that wasn't the only miracle in the family's story. To their medical team's surprise, Brynlee—who is now 11 months old—also didn't need to go to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) following her birth, and she was not affected by the house fire or her mom's injuries. Plus, the little one's name, which was picked out six months before her birth, happens to translate to "burned clearing."

"Her name is just one more way that God was able to prove that his hand has been in this all along," Rachel wrote in a June 8 Instagram post. "That he never left, and that he has always protected all of us."

She added, "We are all alive and okay and count our blessings daily."

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