Following the birth of their son, Jimmy Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney, decided they "didn't want to get too close" to him after he was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition.

During the firs two months of his life, the couple's second child, Billy, underwent emergency open-heart surgery when he was only three days old, which was followed by a second operation last December.

During the opening monologue of his talk show, he tearfully said that his son's "pulmonary valve was completely blocked and he has a hole in the wall between the left and right sides of his heart" when he was born.

Last month, Kimmel, 50, made an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres show, where he discussed the complications of caring for a sick child. It was there Ellen DeGeneres surprised her friend by getting a hospital room - where Billy was cared for - named after him.

"You're such a great guy, and that was so emotional to see you go through that," DeGeneres said. "We called our friends at Children's Hospital LA, including Billy's surgeon. We have named one of the rooms of the Heart Institute floor in honor of Billy."

In an interview for O Magazine, the father-of-four candidly spoke about his 11-month-old son's illness and the brief detachment he and his wife experienced with Billy. Unbeknownst to the couple, they had both been feeling the same heart-wrenching emotions.

"There were secrets we kept from each other that we revealed only after the second surgery. The biggest one was that, I think subconsciously, we didn't want to get too close to the baby because we didn't know what was going to happen," Kimmel told Oprah Winfrey.

"I don't know if that's right or wrong or common or uncommon. But when I told her I was feeling that way, she said, "˜Oh I'm so happy you said that because I was feeling that way too, and I didn't want to express it,'" he added.

Following the success for Billy's two heart surgeries, Kimmel said his son is "doing great" and on the road to recovery.

"He's great," Kimmel said of his son. "He'll have another surgery when he's around 6 or 7 years old, but in the meantime, he's doing great."

Do you think it's understandable that Kimmel and his wife felt a need to detach themselves from their son?

[H/T: PEOPLE]