Danielle Fishel has revealed that she had her first child last week, but the baby boy remains in the hospital after being born four weeks prematurely.
The former "Boy Meets World" actress wrote in an emotional Instagram post on Monday that Adler Lawrence Karp, her first child with husband Jensen Karp, was born on June 24 after "a nightmare we'll never forget" when doctors found fluid in his lungs.
Fishel, 38, wrote that her water broke on June 20, and she was hospitalized that night and put on magnesium sulfate because her baby 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,'' she wrote. "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."
Fishel included a photo of her and Karp comforting Adler, as well as one of his empty crib at home.
"This has been the most trying week and a half of mine and @jensenkarp'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,'' she wrote. "Jensen and I have also become closer than we ever thought possible and the love between us has grown exponentially as we have leaned on each other during both our highest highs and our lowest lows. We feel helpless and powerless and useless and 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."
Karp also wrote an Instagram post announcing Adler's birth, calling him "our miracle."
"Despite months of clean bills of health, at the last minute, he developed unexplained fluid in both of his lung cavities,'' Karp wrote. "Our ensuing rollercoaster ride of emotion, terror, vulnerability and unadulterated sadness has been one we did not expect."
As the couple endures with the difficult circumstances surrounding Adler's health, they are overjoyed to announce his birth.
"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 its complications opens us up to prying eyes — aka paparazzi staked outside our house, following our every move the way they did several times during my pregnancy,'' Fishel wrote. "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."
The couple, who got married last year, announced the pregnancy in January with an Instagram post in which Fishel said she was "eating for two." Fishel showed off her baby bump on Instagram a month later.
She and Karp are already learning about their little boy as they wait to finally take him home from the hospital.
"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,'' Fishel wrote.