“Boy Meets World” star Danielle Fishel Karp and her husband, Jensen Karp, have welcomed their first child together into the world.
However, in a lengthy statement shared by Fishel on Instagram, the new mom revealed that the birth of their baby boy was far from easy.
According to Fishel, their son, Adler Lawrence Karp, was born one week ago on June 24 at 4:52 a.m. — four weeks before his due date. The actress went on to explain the “nightmare” that ensued after her water broke on June 20, one day before her maternity leave was to begin.
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She wrote:
I was hospitalized that night and put on magnesium sulfate because Adler was only 35 weeks old. Unfortunately, after doing an ultrasound, our amazing OB discovered fluid in his lungs that was not there during our last appointment only 10 days earlier – and thus we entered a nightmare we’ll never forget.
Fishel continued:
We still don’t have Adler home with us because the deeply good doctors and nurses in the NICU are working diligently to find out why the fluid is there and determine the best way to get it out. This has been the most trying week and a half of mine and [Jensen’s] lives but we have gotten through it with the support of our incredible family and friends who have shown up for us in unexpected ways.
The new mom added that while the last week and a half has been difficult to endure, it has drawn Fishel and Jensen closer than ever “as we have leaned on each other during both our highest highs and our lowest lows.”
Fishel admitted that they “feel helpless and powerless and useless”:
We wanted so badly to follow our “birth plan,” unsurprisingly none of which involved leaving our beautiful baby boy at the hospital for the first weeks of his life. We have also struggled with making this announcement – we are THRILLED Adler is here and we want to shout it from the rooftops but we know posting about his birth and it’s complications opens us up to prying eyes – aka paparazzi staked outside our house, following our every move they way they did several times during my pregnancy. We are much too fragile for that right now and I pray wholeheartedly that we can have some space as we navigate these next few weeks.
She concluded: “I can’t wait to share more details about him with you (he hates having a poopy diaper for even 1 minute, he loves bath time, he has the cutest sneezes I’ve ever heard) and sing the praises of his NICU care team but I prefer to do that when Adler is in this crib in his nursery at home on a still unknown future date.”
Thousands of moms who have found themselves in a similar situation offered words of encouragement to Fishel and Jensen on Instagram, many of which she replied to with a simple red heart.