Granger Smith and his wife, Amber, are expecting a baby boy in August, and the couple turned to YouTube on Tuesday (May 11) to share the name they have chosen. In a moving video, they reveal that their baby boy’s name will honor his late brother, River.
The couple laugh nervously and ask each other, “Are we really doing this?” at about the 14:50 mark in the video below before putting the name they’ve chosen for their baby boy on the screen. As they explain, the name Maverick Beckham Smith is a very subtle ode to River, who died in a tragic drowning accident at the family’s home in Texas in June of 2019. He was three years old.
Amber explains that while she wanted the letters R-I-V to appear somewhere in the baby’s first name, “I wanted this baby to have his own identity, and I didn’t want him to be so tied to River. But I did want him to have a little piece of his brother in his name.”
Granger adds that “Beckham” means “home by the river.”
The couple announced they were expecting another baby on March 11. They explained that while Amber had her tubes tied after they welcomed River in 2016, Granger ”just felt this overwhelming feeling that, as a father, I had extra love to give” late in 2019.
The Smiths began trying to conceive in January of 2020 through in vitro fertilization (IVF). They got the news that they were expecting in July of 2020, but went through heartbreak all over again when Amber suffered a miscarriage. With just one embryo left, they tried again, and the couple found out they’re expecting again in December of 2020.
“If you believe in God’s plan, maybe this was always God’s plan,” Amber Smith reflected in an interview with CBS This Morning in March.
Maverick Beckham Smith is the couple’s fourth child. Their oldest two children, London and Lincoln, were on hand to share the good news of their little brother in March.
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