Jimmy Kimmel Breaks Down As He Discusses His Newborn Son’s Heart Defects

It’s every new parent’s worst nightmare: Within hours of his newborn son’s birth, comedian Jimmy Kimmel and his wife, Molly, found out their baby was born with serious heart defects.

You can watch the heartbreaking story here:

In the shocking and emotional monologue on his show, Jimmy Kimmel reveals the nightmare that unfolded when a nurse first noticed that their newborn son William had a heart murmur, and was slightly purple in color.

After further inspection, it was revealed that William (or Billy, as his family calls him) would require emergency surgery. After a 3-hour-long surgery (the longest three hours of Kimmel’s life, according to the comedian), the pediatric cardiologist gave them good news: The surgery was a success.

However, Billy will require two more surgeries in the following months, once the doctors determine that he is big enough and healthy enough to undergo more operations.

Kimmel choked up when he shared a picture of how Billy looked after his operation. The little guy is in an incubator and has tons of tubes sticking out of him. But the good news is that six days after the open heart surgery, Billy was able to come home to his parents and his 2-year-old sister Jane. (Kimmel also has two adult children, Katie and Kevin, from his first marriage.)

Kimmel’s wife tweeted a sweet photo of father and son post-surgery noting how thankful she is to “be loved by these two brave guys. Both criers.”

The proud father says that Billy is doing great at home (and humorously shares that he just peed on his mother earlier that day). Sounds funny, but every new parent knows that wet diapers and urine output are the sign of a healthy baby who is getting enough to eat. And his daughter, Jane, has been very hands-on and loving with the little guy. Mom is recuperating nicely as well:

Kimmel says his friends and family were incredibly supportive, and he jokes that even his atheist friends were praying for him.

The comedian ended the monologue on a serious note, touching on the very real fears that millions of Americans have regarding the state of health insurance in our country. He points out that healthcare should not be a privilege available only to the wealthy, and that everyone should have access to life-saving surgeries, especially our children. “If your baby is going to die,” he says, “and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make. I think that’s something that, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right?”

[h/t: NY Times]