With their soap opera background you’d expect that when The Bold and The Beautiful’s Kyle Lowder and Days of Our Lives’ Arianne Zucker decided to have a baby there would be endless drama.
But becoming parents has been nothing but joy for the real-life couple, married since 2002.
“Arianne and I understand how blessed we are that it happened for us right away, which isn’t always the case,” Kyle says as he shows off baby Isabella, who was born on 7 December last year.
Arianne plays Nicole Walker DiMera on Days, while Kyle plays Rick Forrester on Bold, so they’re used to shocking twists.
But nothing surprised them more than hearing they were having a daughter.
“I have two brothers and both my parents have all brothers and their parents had all brothers so there are so many Y chromosomes in my family,” Kyle says.
“When Ari got pregnant we both thought it was physically impossible for us to have a girl, unconsciously referring to her belly as ‘him’. So the moment we found out the sex was so powerful – like a slap upside the head. I was speechless. My brain went directly through the first 18 years of her life – all the milestones that girls have
“I felt like I knew how I could be a father to a son. I can be a disciplinarian. But then, all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Okay, honey, you’re going to have to handle the discipline because I’m just going to give this little girl everything she wants!’” Kyle says.
Isabella – or Izzy, as the doting parents call her – is a dream come true, Arianne says. “When I was 19 I had a very vivid recurring dream about having a little girl and calling her Izzy,” she says.
Now she’s here – and the baby, who weighed just less than 3 kg and measured 48 cm at birth, is growing in leaps and bounds. Kyle says he can’t believe he waited this long to become a dad and is looking forward to his life as a family man.
“You don’t know love until you look at your own child – it’s just so true in that moment. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Everything else just melts away. It was all about my daughter and what she needs and making her life amazing.”