A change of heart. Amber Smith and Granger Smith welcomed son Maverick on Saturday, August 21 — but they initially were on the fence about expanding.
After the couple’s son River died in June 2019 at age 3 in a drowning accident, the country singer, 41, asked his wife whether she wanted another little one.
“I said, ‘No, absolutely not. I can’t. No way,’” Amber, 39, recalled in I Am Second, a film released on Thursday, August 26. “River was our caboose. He was our last. I couldn’t do that. I felt almost guilty like it would be some sort of a betrayal to River.”
The actress noted that she had previously tied her tubes and didn’t think that she could conceive again — until a doctor told her about in vitro fertilization.
“She said, ‘I don’t think I can consider IVF because who would we be to play God?’” Granger recalled. “How could two humans through a lab fertilize an egg and play God? She started crying man it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I just started bawling.”
The “Backroad Song” singer responded with a statement he’d previously told their son Lincoln, 7, about trees: “I looked at her and I said, ‘God makes all the babies, but sometimes man needs to plant the seeds.’”
Amber, who is also the mother of daughter London, 9, got pregnant in their first round of IVF but suffered a miscarriage. Their rainbow baby arrived earlier this month, five months after their Instagram pregnancy announcement.
“Never did I think at 39 I would be blessed with expecting another baby boy,” the then-expectant star told her followers in March. “These past couple of years have been so rough but also so full of so much joy, hope, healing, growing and grace from God. … Lord, I pray that our story can speak life to someone else who may be suffering to never give up hope. To surrender their burdens to you. To trust you even when it hurts.”
In Thursday’s film, Amber called her pregnancy “one of the greatest definitions of grief and joy coexisting together,” adding, “That is restoration and that is healing and that is meaning and that is purposeful, no matter how much it hurts. [God] is working, and he is working all things out for good.”
