DAYS OF OUR LIVES’s Carson Boatman On First-Time Fatherhood
Daddy’s Little Girl: “We certainly are obsessed with our baby,” grins Carson Boatman (Johnny, DAYS), with wife Julana and little Ava.
Carson Boatman (Johnny, DAYS) and his wife, Julana Dizon, got an early Christmas present last year: The couple welcomed their first child, daughter Ava Rey, on December 18, 2023.
So far, the experience of being a first-time father has been remarkable, starting with Boatman being by his wife’s side in the delivery room, . “You go in expecting one thing, and it ends up being totally different,” muses Boatman of Ava’s birth. “Just seeing Julana there, doing what she was doing…. It was so beautiful. I don’t know the words to describe it, honestly. It was just perfect.”
Choosing a name for the new addition to their family came relatively easy for Boatman and Dizon. “Ava is a name that my brother [Conner] actually chose while I was visiting him at his place in Colorado last year,” explains Boatman. “And Rey is for Julana’s father, Reynaldo, who unfortunately passed away a few weeks before Ava’s birth, after a long battle with lung cancer. We knew that we wanted to [honor him].”
Boatman reports that he’s easily acclimated to his new role as a dad, eagerly participating in diaper changes among other newborn-related tasks at home. “I do it all, as much as I can,” he says proudly. “I mean, I’m not doing the breastfeeding, but I am trying to do everything else I can to help make life easier for Julana. I’ve been taking care of pretty much all of the meals and trying to make sure the house is picked up. And if Julana needs a break, I can take [care of] the baby.”
As for the most challenging part of life with a new baby, Boatman admits it’s “the sleep, figuring out our sleeping schedules, because I’m still working. For instance, yesterday I had a 7:30 call time. It’s tough because the baby does not understand there’s a 7:30 call time. So she wakes and sleeps and screams and eats and poops as she pleases. Don’t get me wrong, we love every second of it. I could stare at her and watch her be just there for hours, and I have. We both have. But the most challenging thing has been the sleep and not knowing what to do if she’s crying or screaming; just trying to figure out what’s wrong and soothe and problem-solve. It’s hard to do that for a baby sometimes.”
Yet, Boatman wouldn’t change a moment about the whole fatherhood experience. “The best part of it is just looking at Ava, when she’s sleeping and hearing her little coos,” he muses. “You can feel her breathe and feel her heartbeat, and you can smell her. I think it’s wired into us to be obsessed with our babies, and we certainly are obsessed with our baby.”
For Boatman, that began when Ava was still in the womb. “When we first found out Julana was pregnant, we both thought it was going to be a boy. For some reason we had that feeling, and I was really excited. Then we ended up finding out it was not going to be a boy, it was going to be a girl,” recounts Boatman, adding that “it honestly was a very different feeling. It immediately felt like it was more of a gift, which surprised me, because I thought I wanted a boy. The moment I found out it was a girl, all of a sudden I became so much more emotional about the whole thing. As a father, obviously your children are precious to you, but I think there’s something extra precious about a father’s daughter. That relationship is very special.”
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