Jimmy Kimmel and his wife, co-writer of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Molly McNearney welcomed their second child on April 21. Unfortunately, their three day old showed certain complications and therefore, underwent an open-heart surgery at a children hospital in Los Angles.
On Monday’s tonight show, the talk show host confirmed that his newborn son had successfully undergone the life-threatening surgery. A tearful Kimmel encouraged the audience to donate to childrens’ hospitals.
Kimmel commenced the opening monologue while struggling to hide tears, “We call him Billy. Six pushes and he was out, and he appeared (to be) a normal healthy baby.”
The new parents were moved to the recovery room, where the couple’s eldest child, two-year-old Jane, was there to meet her baby brother. However, only three hours later, a nurse noticed that something was wrong with Billy.
“My wife was in bed relaxing, (when) a very attentive nurse at Cedars-Sinai heard a murmur in his heart and noticed he was a bit purple, which is not common,” Kimmel explained. “[Nurses] determined he wasn’t getting enough oxygen in his blood, either in his heart or lungs … It’s a terrifying thing, you know my wife is back in the recovery room, she has no idea what’s going on.”
Kimmel also talked about how it feels like to see your child dying, “If your baby is going to die, and it doesn’t have to, it should not matter how much money you make.”
Kimmel revealed that he was glad after hearing that US congressmen have decided to not make a $6 billion cut in funding to the National Institute of Health proposed by Donald Trump.
Monday, July 20, 2026
