Hours after announcing they are expecting their third and final child, Matthew Johnson – better known as Matty J – and Laura Byrne did a gender reveal on live radio with fans finding out at the same time as them.
As they cut into a cake revealing they will be having a third daughter, Johnson’s excitement was coupled with the sombre realisation that he’s “never going to have a son”.
A realisation that Johnson tells nine.com.au “took a while to wrap [his] head around”.
Matty J’s excitement was coupled with the realisation that he’s “never going to have a son”. (YouTube/ Life Uncut Podcast)
“Disappointment is probably the wrong word … on the one hand I’m so happy to have another girl but I think it was just digesting the fact that I would never have a son,” he said recalling the moment he found out the gender of his unborn baby on Byrne and Brittany Hockley’s radio show The Pick Up.
Johnson and Byrne share two daughters, Marlie Mae and Lola, who will soon become big sisters to the family’s newest addition.
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The couple are proud parents to Marlie-Mae and Lola. (Instagram)
“I think, instinctively, when you think about becoming a parent, I don’t know if it’s the same for females, but as a guy I definitely imagine my reference point was having a son and playing cricket and sport,” the Aussie media personality, who hosts the Two Doting Dads podcast with his good mate and fellow dad Ash Wick, continues.
“That’s what I imagined it would be like and so just knowing that I wouldn’t ever get a chance to have a son was one that kind of hit hard.”
Matty J has since learned that he can do so much more than he expected as a girl dad. (Instagram/ @ladyandacat)
But now Johnson reflects that his desire to have a son may have been tied to the belief that the things he dreamed of doing as a dad to sons wasn’t possible with daughters – something he now realises may not be the case.
“I think I probably viewed being a girl dad in more of a traditional sense, where I didn’t understand that there’s so much that I get to do with my girls that I would have thought about doing with a potential son,” he says.
“For example, Lola loves playing soccer. So at the moment we’re doing every Sunday down the park doing soccer clinics and she loves it and I love it.”
Johnson reflects that there is no gender barrier to the things he gets to enjoy with his kids.
“We can play soccer in the morning and then get our nails done in the afternoon,” he says, reflecting that his daughter Lola would “gladly put a ballerina dress on in the morning and then go outside and dig for worms in the afternoon”.
He now realises that as a girl dad he gets “to enjoy all aspects of parenting not just the ones that were more traditional in [his] mind”.
For Johnson, being a dad involves “being in the trenches with [his] wife”. (Instagram)
For Johnson, he is grateful that he gets to lap up every bit of that parenting journey with his wife.
“Being a modern day dad for me means being right there in the trenches with my wife through all the amazing parts but also the exhausting and relentless parts as well,” he says.
“I think it’s not just about being a fun-times dad, which is like playing with the kids and having fun. I think it’s about doing all the unsexy, unfun parts of parenting and making sure that my kids see me as someone who contributed just as much as mum did.”
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