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"I should have listened to my husband!"
That's what six-month's-pregnant lifeguard Dawn Schaumann says to herself every day since she was ripped to shreds by a gigantic shark.
Dawn's hubby had an eerie premonition of her ordeal - and begged her to stay out of the water!
But the pretty Vero Beach, FL gal went in anyway. And in one powerful
bite, the ten-foot shark's upper jaw crushed and lacerated her left
hand, while the lower jaw tore a gaping eight-inch wound in her
left thigh.
"On the day I was attacked, Bill told me: 'Please, honey, don't go swimming in the ocean today. I saw baitfish in close and that means sharks,' the 26-year-old mom-to-be says.
"Ever since I became pregnant, Bill had become paranoid about sharks. But never had he given me such a stern warning as that day."
Bill, 39, a lieutenant with the Indian River County Public Safety Department, says that just two weeks before the attack, he had a nightmare about his wife being eaten by sharks.
"The dream was so terrible, I couldn't even tell Dawn about it," he says.
"The morning that she was bitten, as I drove along the coast to work, I saw all the birds following the bait fish.
"I remember thinking: 'I hope for once Dawn listens to me.' " But she didn't.
Dawn says she looked for the fish that signal sharks are about and, seeing none, decided it would be safe to go in.
"Then, in the instant when the water was turning red around me from my own blood," says Dawn, "I realized that Bill was going to lose me and our baby - all because I didn't listen to him."
Doctors say because she was swimming freestyle, with her left hand
on the downstrokd in front of her stomach, she saved her unborn
baby from the shark's razor-sharp teeth. She was 100 yards out in
the ocean.
"I swam faster than I've ever swum," she says.
A couple on the beach spotted the bleeding Dawn crawling out of the pounding
surf.
Incredibly, Bill was the first Emergency Medical Technician on the scene.
His wife was in shock and losing blood fast.
Dawn's wounds needed more than 90 stitches, but the baby was safe.
The baby, to be named MacIntyre William Shark Schaumann, is due next week.
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