Diego Loyzaga. Image: screengrab from YouTube/Toni Gonzaga Studio; Instagram/@diegoloyzaga
Diego Loyzaga said that his daughter was “hundred percent planned,” recalling how he had been vocal about already wanting to have a child years prior to welcoming his firstborn.
Diego spoke about fatherhood for the first time during an interview by actress-TV host Toni Gonzaga for her vlog on Sunday, Nov. 19. The actor narrated how his partner gave birth to their child in Australia a day after he celebrated his birthday last May.
He also lamented how a certain tabloid writer apparently announced the birth of his child to the public before he was able to do so.
“It’s an instant na parang my whole life has changed—’there is this baby na; now I have to prepare,'” Diego said of being a first-time dad. “…I’m also trying to be the most supportive dad that I can be for the mom and my baby, [of course].”
“I didn’t really grow up in one household with my dad so parang when I see my baby, I’m already doing something that I didn’t get to experience myself,” he added, clarifying that he doesn’t mean such statement in a bad way.
Diego further recounted how he met his dad, veteran actor Cesar Montano, for the first time when he was 13 years old, which the younger actor considers as one of the reasons why the two of them had “collided” several times in the past.
Diego—who underscored that he now understands his dad as a “human, a parent, and a father”—then stressed that he doesn’t want his daughter to go through the same circumstances he had when he was a kid.
“…I promised to give her the things I didn’t have—a father,” Diego said. “Hindi ko ipaparamdam sa anak ko ‘yung naramdaman ko.” (I will not let my child feel what I felt.)
Diego disclosed as well how he had been telling his mom, actress Teresa Loyzaga, about his yearning to be a father for years.
“I don’t know—it was just in my bones; it’s like in my DNA na na-feel ko na rin na parang (that I somehow felt that) I need to have a kid,” he told Gonzaga. “Parang feeling ko (I felt like I already) need a kid here. I don’t want to get too old.”
“She was planned,” he continued, speaking about his daughter. “She was a hundred percent planned.”
Diego, who admitted in the interview that he doesn’t believe in marriage, then became teary-eyed as he expressed hope that his child would not have to heal from her childhood and from having the actor as her dad.
“There’s nothing in this life now that I wanna do aside from if it’s for her,” he declared.
Diego first introduced his daughter to the public last June. While Loyzaga has yet to give further details about the child and his partner, Montano revealed to the Philippine Daily Inquirer in an exclusive interview that his granddaughter’s name is Hailey.