Danielle Fishel's first months of motherhood have been nothing like she ever expected. The Boy Meets World actress gave birth to son Adler Lawrence Karp on June 24. The actress was excited to welcome her and husband Jensen Karp's first child. It was stressful for the couple, however. Danielle gave birth four weeks early due to medical issues. Then Adler had to remain in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children's Hospital Los Angeles for three weeks.
Danielle first mentioned the guilt she felt in a post about her son's birth on Instagram. "We feel helpless and powerless and useless," the actress explained. "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."
Since Adler's release from the hospital, there have been ups and downs regarding his health. It's necessitated more hospital visits and a lot of anxiety for the couple. Danielle is now opening up about her experiences as a parent and "mom guilt" in an essay penned for Good Morning America.
Danielle Fishel has made mentions of experiencing mom guilt since giving birth to son Adler Lawrence Karp on June 24. She delves further into those feelings for an essay penned for Good Morning America.
"I had heard of 'mom guilt.' It was right up there with other types of guilt I heard about growing up, like 'Catholic guilt' or 'Jewish guilt.' I heard it was the awful feeling you’re never doing what you’re supposed to be doing, or not doing enough of what you should be doing, or not doing what you should be doing well enough," the new mom wrote.
Danielle continued on to discuss all the different types of families she'd seen and all the different types of mothers she'd been exposed to. She recalls vowing not to fall victim to mom guilt.
"What was there to feel guilty about? Naively, and perhaps arrogantly, I thought, 'I'll never let myself have mom guilt.' Then I had a baby," Danielle continues, expressing the feelings that so many new moms identify with.
"My 'birth plan' included having a natural childbirth, free from any drugs, because I read it was better for the baby and ultimately better for mom, as well," she continued, before describing why things didn't go that way.
"Because I went into labor more than four weeks early and my doctor discovered fluid in Adler’s chest cavity, I was immediately put on sodium magnesium to stop my contractions and give his lungs time to fully develop," she explained.
"Seventy-two hours later, due to a significant decrease in amniotic fluid, I was induced with Pitocin. My drug-free birth was out the window."
She continued: "The guilty thoughts came flooding into my head: 'Why did my water break so early? Was it because I was on my feet working 12-plus hour days at almost 36 weeks? Was it all the spicy food I had been craving? Did I do something that will hurt my baby?'"
Danielle then went on to explain how she was unable to breastfeed as she'd hoped, but that Adler was given breast milk through a feeding tube.
"Unfortunately, after 10 days, the fatty nature of breast milk caused a major increase in the amount of fluid in his lungs and we were rushed by ambulance to Children’s Hospital, where he was taken off breast milk and put on a medium chain triglyceride formula," she explained.
She then found the guilt hounding her yet again. "The guilt arrived with gusto. 'Why is my milk hurting my child? Is my baby allergic to me? Formula is bad for him because it’s full of high fructose corn syrup. This is all my fault,'" she recalls feeling.
Although Danielle did get the green light to breastfeed when Adler was 6 weeks old, they were forced to stop again. The formula was also uncomfortable for the baby boy. Danielle was beside herself.
"Did we make the decision to try breast milk too soon? Is there something I could have done to prevent this? How did I miss the symptoms of fluid in his lungs? Has he been struggling to breathe?" she recalls thinking.
Then Danielle discussed going back to work at the end of last month as a director on Disney Channel's Sydney to the Max. "My first day back was hard. I came home after being away for 12 hours and Adler was asleep for the night. He hadn’t seen my face since 7 a.m. that morning and now he wouldn’t see it again until he woke me up for a middle-of-the-night feeding," she recalled.
"As I cried over his sweet sleeping face, the guilt came back with a vengeance. 'Does he remember me? Does he think I abandoned him? Am I hurting my son by desiring a career outside the home? Am I selfish?'" she remembered thinking.
That's when Danielle realized the truth about mom guilt: "None of us escape mom-guilt. It’s there whether you’re a stay-at-home mom or work outside the house, but one there is one thing I know for certain each and every mother has in common: We are trying our absolute best 100% of the time."
"When you see a mom feeding her baby formula, or breast milk in a bottle, or directly from her breast, or through a feeding tube (I have done all of these in Adler’s 15 weeks of life), or you see a mom dragging a screaming toddler through Target, or you see a mom calling home from work, or you get a text from a stay-at-home mom who is ready to pull her hair out, know that there is a story there," she reminded readers.
She finished off by asking readers for a very important favor. "The next time you see a mom with her baby or young child, look her in the eye and honestly tell her she’s doing an amazing job," she advised. "Because you are, mama. I see you and you’re doing great."
