Tom Daley has welcomed his second child with his husband Dustin Lance Black.
The celebrity couple announced the surprise baby news this morning on Wednesday, April 5, having previously not shared they were expecting.
The Olympic diver, 28, and his American husband, 48, shared the news with The Times in a low-key statement and revealed their second son, Phoenix Rose, was born on Tuesday, March 28. It read: "Black-Daley on 28th March to Thomas Robert Daley and Dustin Lance Black, a son, Phoenix Rose."
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Tom and Dustin are already parents to five-year-old Robert Ray - who they also had through surrogacy in 2018, a year after the couple tied the knot.
The Olympic gold medallist and his screenwriter husband previously spoke out on why they decided to opt for a surrogate in America instead of the UK, citing a difference in legal rights.
After the pair welcomed their first child, Tom said: "We looked into it in the UK and in the US. In the UK it's a lot more complicated because surrogates aren't as well protected legally, intended parents aren't protected legally, it's just not safe, there's a lot of hurdles to have to jump over.”
Tom has also opened up about his journey to fatherhood, particularly when it comes to the barriers same-sex couples face whilst trying to start a family of their own.
Appearing on Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, Tom said: “Once, I started to realise that I was gay, it was like, how am I going to have children in the future? What does this look like for me? What are the options?”
“And having to figure out exactly how that was going to work, looking down the routes of adoption, surrogacy and all of those different things.”
He continued: “It is a lot more complicated for same-sex parents to have children and you have to really think about it and like really, really want to have kids in order to be able to make it work and it’s extremely complex for same-sex couples in a number of different ways.
“Lance and I had lost so many people in our families and there was something about surrogacy that we were drawn to that just meant that we could pass on the people that we’d lost, their genes and their thoughts, their feelings, their personalities and being able to bring someone into the world, that felt so extremely special.”
The TV personality revealed that losing his own father, Robert, who passed away in 2011 aged 40 following a cancer battle, cemented his desire to become a father himself.
He added: “For as long as I could remember, I have wanted to be a parent. I think because of the relationship with my mum and dad, we were so close and then, when I lost my dad, it was like, I want to be everything that he was to me to someone else because every child deserves to have what I had with my dad because it was such a special relationship, we were so close.”
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