Could you have done what this quick-thinking New York City mom did on Tuesday?

As a massive tree began falling in the part of the park where she was strolling Tuesday morning with her three young children, this mother — already hailed as a hero — protected her three kids from potentially serious injury and maybe even death.

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“Anne Monoky Goldman, 39, broke her neck and her son Grant, two, suffered a fractured skull,” the New York Post reported. “A witness told the paper that if not for the mother’s quick action, all three children could have been killed.”

“It was terrifying,” Jamie Brown, 42, a Virginia tourist, told the publication. “You heard the tree fall and didn’t know what happened, and then you hear a baby scream.”

Mothers have been known over time — if their children are in danger — to find sudden strength in the face of threats; this latest story proves it in spades.

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The mom was walking along West Drive near West 62nd Street with her one-and-a-half-month-old baby, James, strapped to her chest and Grant and his four-year-old brother, Will, in a stroller when the towering elm toppled on them at about 10 a.m., as the Post reported.

“The mother hit her head trying to shield branches from striking the children,” FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer told the publication.

The scene was chaotic and frightening, as the Post and Fox News reported.

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Rescuers pulled the woman from the fallen tree, with some using chainsaws to reach her. Goldman lost consciousness for about three minutes and “woke up immediately, asking about her kids,” the Post reported.

“It was giant, it was across all of them, we were able to pull the branches back and get the three- and four-year-old out pretty easily, but then the baby was strapped to her so that took a little bit,” Jack Jones, a nurse who witnessed the tree fall, told CBS. “They had the stroller tipped up against her, so I think that kind of saved them.”

At New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Goldman was diagnosed with a fractured neck, according to brother-in-law Ryan Goldman. “She’s still going through a lot of treatment. She’s getting a CAT scan and MRIs,” he told the Post.

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The two-year-old child, Grant, had a cracked skull, but his brothers were discharged from the hospital Tuesday afternoon, according to Ryan.

Related: Mother’s Intuition Works Every Time

The brother-in-law told the publication Goldman is more concerned about her son, Grant, than herself. “Nothing [is] more important to her than her kids. No question that when her sons recover from this, she, too, will get better. But for the moment, she is struggling,” he told the Post.

Fox News contributed to this piece. 

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Dietmar Rabich, Wikimedia Commons)