Stefanie Keenan/WireImageBeing a first-time parent can be pretty nerve-racking, but it was particularly so for Jennifer Lopez.
Interviewed on CNN's upcoming Big Stars, Big Giving special, the actress-singer revealed details about a medical scare she and then-hubby Marc Anthony had after discovering a lump on their daughter Emme's head when she was just a baby.
Here's what she had to say.
"I just remember that feeling of something is wrong with that baby and I'm gonna die," the 42-year-old Lopez told anchor Alina Cho about the terrifying incident, which E! News confirmed occurred not long after the tot and her twin brother, Max, were born in 2008.
After noticing the bump, J.Lo said the couple became alarmed enough to take Emme, now 3, straight to the hospital to get it checked out.
"I remember looking at Marc and going, 'We should call the doctor'…I started panicking a little bit and he was panicking, too, because…we were thinking, Did somebody drop her when we weren't looking?" she wondered. "I just remember looking at him and saying, 'If f Emme's not going to be OK, I'm not going to be OK. He's like, 'I'm not going to be OK—none of us are going to be OK.' "
The good news? After a battery of tests that included an MRI, doctors gave Emme a clean bill of health and she ended up being just fine.
However, the drama prompted Lopez to think about how lucky she is, given her celebrity status, to be able to afford the best that medicine has to offer while others were less fortunate.
Both Lopez and Anthony's publicists tell E! News that it also inspired the superstar and her TV journalist sister, Lynda Lopez, to launch the Maribel Foundation as a result.
The nonprofit, named after Anthony's sister Maribel, who died of brain cancer at the age of 9, is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of women and children and provide better pediatric care to underserved and underprivileged communities.
CNN's one-hour Big Stars, Big Giving, which also features sit-downs with legendary crooner Tony Bennett and former president Bill Clinton, airs on Dec. 24 and 25.
—Additional reporting by Sharareh Drury