Actress Danielle Fishel and husband Jensen Karp welcomed their first child June 24, a son named Adler Lawrence. Adler was due in July but arrived a month early and resided in the NICU for three weeks due to a condition called chylothorax, which is a leak in the lymphatic system that leads to liquid in the lungs. One of the more peculiar issue with chylothorax is that breastmilk worsens the condition. So Danielle was not able to breastfeed Adler until the condition healed, which, thankfully, it did, and Adler is now home. However, due to his not being allowed to consume breastmilk, he didn’t learn to latch properly, which likely means will not breastfeed at all. He’s receiving Danielle’s milk via bottle, but the fact that this is a medical condition has not lessened Danielle’s guilt at all. She still feels like it was somehow her fault.
Seeing her son whisked to the neonatal intensive care unit right after his birth was hard enough, but Danielle Fishel soon learned that mom guilt sets in pretty quickly too.
“I had this feeling instantly of somehow it was my fault,” Fishel, 38, admits of her baby boy’s health condition: chylothorax, a “leak in the lymphatic system” that breast milk worsened. As a result, the couple “had to take him off of breast milk and put him on a specially formulated formula that doesn’t use the lymphatic system.”
“This milk that I’m producing that’s supposed to keep him alive and is supposed to be the healthiest thing for him is the thing that’s keeping him in the hospital,” the actress says of her internal thoughts. “I just felt like it was somehow my fault. Even though I knew that wasn’t really rational, it’s hard.”
“You want your body and everything you do as a mom to be functioning optimally for your baby and when it’s not, you feel like a failure,” Fishel continues. “There was a little bit of a mourning process and a grieving process for me there, but now that I’ve come to terms with it and I know that hopefully the plan is that I get to transition back to breast milk in the next few weeks, I’m feeling much better about that. We’ll see how it goes.”
“I don’t anticipate [Adler] ever latching because he’s never been on my breast before, so it may be possible that he’s never able to actually breastfeed that way, but I have plenty of milk stored and I can always feed him from a bottle,” she tells PEOPLE, adding proudly, “He’s a pro with the bottle now.”
While Fishel “can’t speak for” her producer husband Karp, 39, she insists that “mom guilt does not waste anytime kicking in” after a child is born, admitting she experienced it “instantly.”
“Every second that you are awake doing anything, you feel guilty that you aren’t at home,” she says. And on the flip side of that, “Every second that you’re at home, you feel like you’re missing out on the other things that you’re supposed to be doing.”
It’s so scary to have your baby taken to NICU for any reason, let alone leave him there for three weeks as they try to get fluid out of his lungs. Danielle was likely trying to make sense of this any way she could and unfortunately, many women blame themselves first when looking for answers *raises hand*. All my friends who were unable to breastfeed echoed Danielle’s feelings: I was made to do this, why can’t I? I felt the same when I miscarried. There are stacks of fact-research books that explain what can go wrong that absolve us, but it doesn’t really matter in the moment. I’m delighted to hear that Adler is home and thriving.
As for Mom Guilt – preach! No matter how much you promise yourself you won’t succumb to it, it finds you. Danielle is not showing Adler’s face on social media but People did get some exclusive shots of him. He’s darling. However, she does post full face pics of her pup, Brunch, so I’m including some of those below.
Photo credit: WENN Photos and Instagram
I was unable to breastfeed and could’nt care less. Enough with the mom guilt. I understand it somehow but it’s starting to feel like a toxic contest.
Umm, I don’t think women do it on purpose…
I was but had a friend and daughters who couldn’t. My attitude is whatever gets nutrition to the baby is what is best.
same here, I felt guilty with my first child and had a very bad time, with second I said it was over and they are both more than fine.
I gave myself mastitis trying to do the Pinterest power pumping crap. Never again. Felt like I was going to pass out and almost did! I was lucky to breastfeed for 14 months and just did formula when needed.
Mastitis is the worst. I was in the hospital nearly two days because of it. The ER docs couldn’t get my fever down and I couldn’t leave until it dropped.
Horrible. The only time I have felt sicker was when I had influenza A, with a 104.2 fever.
Mastitis sucks (pun not intended).
I delivered my daughter 9 weeks early. I felt like it was my fault. Like I couldn’t even do *this* right? I was unable to breastfeed. NICU can be a scary place for a new mom. I got past my mom guilt. My daughter is 10 and 6 million shades of awesome
My heart goes out to her. My last baby was born 6 weeks early and spent 3 weeks in the NICU and was a on a feeding tube at first and envet learned to latch properly and I felt so awful that I couldn’t nurse her like I had my other children and that I had to leave her in the NICU to go home to her brothers and all kinds of things. It took a huge toll on me mentally.
My baby was in the NICU for two weeks after he was born, we didn’t get to hold him until he was 8 days old and he had surgery to get a chest tube to drain fluids hours after he was born…it was so traumatic at the time, now he’s 14 months and taking his first solo walks. He never latched because he was on a feeding tube so I’d pump and it was so hard when I was alone during maternity leave. I think back now and wonder how no one really tells you about the hard stuff, I talk about it as much as I can to help prepare other moms to be.
A lot of times it’s easier as mothers to blame ourselves because the alternative is that something is wrong with the child that is out of our control. And that can be much scarier to process.
Deep. Never thought about it like that
That is a very cute dog! I went and liked it so it would no longer have 666 likes
You’re the real MVP! 🙂
Being a new mom is *SO* hard. My good friend told me that she couldn’t wait for maternity leave vacation and was upset that i was a “debbie downer” warning her that it was a huge adjustment. She had her baby 2 weeks ago and called me to ask if she was going to die.
It’s not just the physical work but the absolute anxiety that you have to get it right because it’s your new job.
I am going to have my second and feel so much more relaxed about the entire ordeal knowing that babies cry (they just do), I wont sleep much for a while (but it won’t last forever), and that thank god there are all sorts of modern things to help me out if breastfeeding doesnt go so well or my delivery can’t be vaginal or if something else happens.
Sending out love to all the new moms who feel exhausted!
That initial adjustment is just awful and I was like “how come no one warned me?!!” and now (at 5 months post partum) when I think about warning a pregnant woman I’m like “I don’t know if I want to bum them out/scare the shit out of them during their last days of freedom”
haha it’s a fine line, isn’t it?
I think i’ve figured out that the best way is probably to say, “the first few months were really hard for me and if they are for you too, ask for help and talk to me. You won’t be alone if it’s a little different than you thought!”
Oh my gosh, my second leave was so much better than the first. The first was HELL, but the second yeah – just like you say. Babies cry and don’t sleep, but not forever. My 2nd was born in late fall and winter was particularly cold. I just sat on the couch with him and watched The West Wing for hours. If you can give yourself that freedom to just accept that babies gonna baby, it’s much easier – but there was NO WAY I could have done that with baby 1.
YES! my second maternity leave was so much better. Oh, you only want to sleep on me? Okay. Oh, you want to eat 20 times a day? Okay. etc. Both my boys were actually relatively easy babies, so I was lucky (no colic etc), but with my first I didn’t know how to roll with it. Like, I would get so frustrated when he wouldn’t sleep on his crib, and would only sleep on me. My second one – whatever dude. Are you sleeping? yes? then okay.
Its something I say to new moms all the time now – “they wont be doing X in kindergarten.” I know its hard in the moment, so I’m not trying to brush off the immediate stress and anxiety over it, but it was so…..weirdly freeing….with my second, to know that nothing was permanent.
They took my son straight to the NICU after he was born. I didnt even get to hold him, it was so sad. He spent 2 weeks there, and it was a little over a week before I could hold him. He couldn’t latch either, so he was bottle fed breastmilk. I definitely suffered post partum depression after he was born, which I didnt recognize until months later, I just thought I was a terrible mother who wasnt interested in my newborn son. I often wonder how much is due to not having that bonding time for a few weeks.
Fed is best. Enough with the mom shaming. Signed, a mother who was mom shamed for years over having to formula feed her first baby.
Amen. I had a total nervous breakdown and extreme anxiety with my first, because I couldn’t make enough milk to feed him yet I continued to pump like an insane person for months. I had horribly painful complications from my emergency C-section, yet I continued to try and get virtual blood from a stone because I was totally brainwashed by “breast is best.” (Expensive lactation consultant diagnosed it as a latch problem but it clearly was a supply problem on my end.) It was hell. When my second was born, she got a bottle from the get-go with no looking back. Best decision I ever made.
Our last baby was home for a week and then was rushed to the hospital with a viral infection that he picked up. 21 days in the pediatric ward on IV treatment through a central line. I get horrible-not just for baby who had all these tests and where I felt so guilty for letting family come visit early (partner and I both tested negative), but the toddler at home. Adjusting from moving to a big boy bed, new preschool, new baby, and now his parents have almost vanished for a month.
I know none of that is my fault-but it was a lot of nights up sobbing while wracked with guilt.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The NICU and public health nurses are HEROS. I had my own nightmare and they fought hard to save my daughter, and they won. I can echo a lot of the useless guilt I felt for failing at giving birth, not latching, finally latching, not enough milk etc. It goes smoothly for some, not so much for others. The bottom line is a healthy, thriving baby. It doesn’t matter how you get there. Love and solidarity to ALL moms.
The toxic pressure new mothers get around breastfeeding is horrific. There’s so much garbage advice being passed around and a refusal to acknowledge that some mother-child dyads simply won’t ever successfully breastfeed for a variety of reasons. My son couldn’t breastfeed because of an oral-motor issue that didn’t get diagnosed until he was a year old and had to get feeding therapy to learn to eat solid food. I paid multiple lactation consultants who looked at my scabby, bleeding nipples and my son’s latch and declared all was well, I just needed to keep breastfeeding. Not a single one figured out that my son’s latch was severely abnormal and in the words of the occupational therapist we saw later on, “You were never going to be able to breastfeed him.” It contributed to my PPD and I’m still angry about it a decade later.
Jesus, my daughter is 22, and has anxiety issues and I still feel guilty that it must have been my fault in the way I raised her!