The Miller family has a lot to be thankful for this holiday season.
The Olympic gold medalist Bode Miller and his wife, Morgan, announced that they welcomed a healthy baby girl at their home in Orange County, California, with the help of a midwife, as reported by People magazine yesterday.
The new addition, who has yet to receive a name, arrived just after Thanksgiving on November 26 and came in weighing 8 lbs. 5 oz. and measuring 22.25 inches long.
Bode and Morgan spoke with People about the birth, telling the magazine, “She’s perfect and bringing her into this world was a perfect way to close this chapter of growing our family. Our hearts are so full.”
Bode and Morgan tragically lost their other daughter, Emmy, in a drowning accident in 2018
The arrival of their baby girl holds extra meaning for the couple, who share sons Nash, 6, Easton, 3, and twins Asher and Aksel, 2, along with Bode’s son Nate, 8, and daughter Dace, 13, from two former relationships.
Bode and Morgan also shared a daughter named Emeline but the young toddler was tragically killed after wandering into an open pool area and falling in while Morgan was visiting a friend.
Although Emmy was resuscitated by paramedics, she had been underwater too long and suffered irreparable brain damage and subsequently died from her injuries.
Drowning is the leading cause of accidental deaths among children ages 5 and under.
Singer/songwriter Granger Smith and his wife, Amber, also tragically lost their three-year-old son to drowning the same summer as Bode and Morgan’s daughter drowned.
Bode and Morgan now advocate strongly for swim lessons for babies as young as six months old
Morgan and Bode opened up about the horrible loss one year after the accidental drowning in an emotional plea to parents to put their young children into swim safety lessons as early as possible.
“She (Emmy) always wore little puddle jumpers, she had a pink one…she’d had it on earlier that morning and was jumping off the top of the wall into the water and would pop right back up to the surface,” Bode shared about the events leading up to the accident.
“We thought we were being good parents, we thought we were being responsible and, in the end, that was ultimately the cause of what led her to think she could just probably go right in the pool and float. Take your child in the water without one and show them what happens when they don’t have anything on and show them that they sink and they don’t float very easily.”
After Emmy’s death, the couple placed their youngest children into safety swim classes as soon as they were able, hiring instructors to teach their twin babies how to float and their then-19-month-old son, Easton, how to properly swim.
With the arrival of their baby girl, the couple feels they are now done having children and, while thrilled to have another girl in the family, they are fully aware that Emmy could never be replaced.
“You know, there’s obviously no replacing kids. All of ours are so unique that it’s always a surprise, but then we had the identical twin boys (in 2019) and we were kind of like, ‘Whoa, maybe, maybe that’s the end for us,'” Bode told People earlier this year after the couple announced they were expecting.
However, the pair decided they wanted to try one more time for a girl, saying in May that, “…we just had so much more love to give and we had so much more love we wanted to give.”
While baby girl Miller has yet to be named, Bode and Morgan are undoubtedly enjoying basking in the glow of completing their family unit while keeping daughter Emmy’s memory alive.