At her grandparents' home in Fluker, La.,   18-year-old daughter Maddie is gushing about  . She recently finished bingeing the long-running series centered on beloved onscreen mom-and-daughter duo Lorelai and Rory Gilmore — and the similarities to her own life were hard to miss.

"They grew up together, and we kind of did too," she says of being raised by Jamie Lynn, who gave birth to Maddie when she was 17.

Like Lorelai, Jamie Lynn is bold and outspoken, while Maddie shares Rory's ambitious "type A" personality.

"Everything she's doing with her life now is a lot of firsts for me," says Jamie Lynn, 35. "Watching her become an adult, accomplishing her goals and going to college...I can't believe I have a kid doing all of these things."

At the height of her   fame, Jamie Lynn — the younger sister of (they were raised in the small town of Kentwood, La., by parents Jamie and  ) — became pregnant with her then boyfriend Casey Aldridge when she was 16.

"I was called the biggest letdown in the world," she recalls of the intense tabloid coverage.

Determined to give her daughter a healthy environment, she moved away from Hollywood to Mississippi.

"It really was just me and her," says Jamie Lynn, who eventually split with Aldridge and moved back to Louisiana. "I had to be like, 'Look, this little girl needs you. You better figure it out.' I wanted to create a good, stable life for my daughter."

Looking back, "she was definitely strict but with good reason. She just wants me to be safe," says Maddie. "We just had fun together because she did have me so young."

In 2014 their little family grew when Jamie Lynn married businessman  , 45 — but their happy life was nearly shattered after   in 2017 and trapped underwater in a pond on their property. Airlifted to a hospital, Maddie was in a  .

While Maddie doesn't remember the accident, "I feel like our faith got a lot stronger," she says. "It definitely put things into perspective."

Before the accident she had been "begging me for a little sibling," says Jamie Lynn. "When she came out of her coma, she's like, 'You going to give me that baby?'"

Indeed, Jamie Lynn welcomed a second daughter, Ivey, 8, the next year — "We always say she just went up to heaven to go pick out her little sister," she quips — and big sister Maddie made a full recovery.

"I just was so happy to have her, but how in the world did God give her back?" Jamie Lynn asks. "And then He gave her back in a way that she's succeeding, she's beautiful, she's kind, she's smart...I feel like I don't get to ask for anything else in life because I got the biggest blessing."

Ahead of Maddie's  last month, Jamie Lynn flew back and forth from Louisiana to Atlanta, where she shot season 5 of Netflix's Sweet Magnolias (streaming now), to be present for her daughter's senior-year  , like prom and homecoming.

"I never had a normal school experience," says Jamie Lynn, who made her acting debut at 10 in Britney's 2002 film  before joining Nickelodeon's sketch-comedy series All That and landing her own show in 2005. "Maybe there was the little girl in me being like, 'I didn't get to do any of this. This is really cool.'"

As Maddie prepares to leave home to study health sciences and play softball at the University of Southern Mississippi in August, her parents are relishing family time.

"Jamie is the reason I really started to love softball," Maddie says of her dad. "He has coached me for as long as I can remember. I was literally the worst one on the team when I was little!"

With his and Jamie Lynn's support, she dreams of one day playing in the Women's College World Series. And after surviving her own health crisis, Maddie hopes to help other kids by becoming a pediatrician one day.

For now, the Watsons are fitting in as many final softball practices, movie nights and games of Scrabble as they can.

"I'm so proud of her and everything she's done, but I also cry in the car because I'm not going to have my baby home every day," says Jamie Lynn, adding, "She's always going to be my baby."

After a journey filled with ups and downs, Mom is also allowing herself some sweet dreams.

"I hope I'm working at her doctor's office," says Jamie Lynn. "And I hope I'm hanging out with our grandbabies [one day] and just spoiling them rotten, driving her nuts, living across the way just like we do now."

Whatever their future holds, just like Lorelai and Rory, Maddie is sure of one thing: "We'll always have each other's backs."