Earlier this week, actress Jennifer Garner got word that her long-running series "Alias" was being cancelled at the end of the current season (story: www.bellaonline.com/articles/art37890.asp). While I'm sure the news was hard to take, she managed to end the week on a very high note as she and husband Ben Affleck welcomed their first child into the world.

Their baby, a healthy daughter, made her debut Thursday (December 1) at 6:26 p.m. EST. No other details, including where the infant was born, have been released.

"Mother, father and baby are doing great," said their publicists, Ken Sunshine and Nicole King, in statements to the press.

While some news outlets are reporting the couple have named their daughter Violet, their reps have declined to issue an official statement to that fact, as of this time.

Garner and Affleck first met when they worked together on the 2001 film Pearl Harbor, but got to know each other better when they co-starred opposite each other in 2003's Daredevil.

In March 2004, the actress, 33, filed for divorce after 2 1/2 years of marriage to actor Scott Foley, with whom she co-starred with on the television show "Felicity." She began dating her "Alias" co-star Michael Vartan, but broke up with him several months later.

Affleck, 33, meanwhile, saw his high-profile engagement to singer/actress Jennifer Lopez implode in January 2004, leaving him on the market again.

The two kept their budding romance a secret, at first, but they were outed at a Red Sox game and soon after confessed to the romance. Rumors about Garner's pregnancy first began spreading in May 2005, a reported nine months into her relationship with Affleck, but were not officially confirmed until after the couple had wed in a small, low-key ceremony on the Turks and Caicos Islands on June 29.

Garner originally tried to keep the baby's gender a secret, but accidentally let the news slip during her September 27 appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." "You can just start to feel really pregnant, like you are the hugest person on the face of the planet. I felt bigger and bigger, like she ... ." Garner uttered. Then she quickly covered her mouth with her hands as the crowd cheered the slip-up.

With Garner's expanding waistline becoming too difficult to hide in an action series, the pregnancy was written into this season's "Alias" storyline. Her character, Sydney Bristow, has yet to deliver on the show.

Even with the cancellation of her show, Garner isn't going to be short on paychecks. She still has a few episodes left to film, starting in March after her brief maternity leave. Next year, she headlines the film, Catch and Release, a drama said to be in the vein of Erin Brochovich. Affleck, after almost a year's absence from the screen, will also have several films out next year, including Truth, Justice and the American Way, an autobiography in which he stars as the original TV Superman, George Reeves.

BellaOnline wishes the Garner-Affleck family all the best.