Gladiators star Steel welcomes baby 14 months after death of premature son

Gladiators star Steel has welcomed a baby boy with his wife just 14 months after the death of their premature son.

Steel, whose real name is Zack George, revealed last year that his baby Leo had been born prematurely at 23 weeks and died after being cared for in a neonatal intensive care unit.

Taking to Instagram yesterday, Zack shared a picture of himself and his wife Samantha with their new baby.

Captioning the post, he wrote: ‘You will heal us more than you will ever know. We love you so much… Our baby boy.’

Last year in August, Samantha told how she and Zack, who have a three-year-old daughter called Ivy, had started trying for another baby in a bid to fill ‘the void’ left by their son’s death.

She said to The Mirror: ‘I love Ivy so much I want to give her a friend for life, we’ve been given the OK to try again when we’re ready…

‘It’s been a really short time, but I need to fill that void, we want another baby, another little boy, but we both say, ”Whatever Leo decides to give us”, people say you’ll never replace Leo, but I do feel my next baby will be a big part of him.’

Following the death of their baby Leo, Zack explained how he had three blood transfusions, collapsed lungs, a grade one and two bleed on his brain and a hole in his heart.

At the time of his death, the BBC star said that he ‘wishes he could have done more’ to help him.

In May last year, they laid Leo to rest at a funeral service and shared a picture of the floral arrangements on a social media post.

A month after his death, the family then held a funeral to say goodbye to Leo.

Revealing the speech that Zack read out at the service, it read: ‘The hardest speech I’ve ever had to read. You came into this world early, tiny and brave, with a heart that beat like thunder.

‘Thirteen days. That’s all we had. But in that time, you taught us more about love, and courage, than most ever will. Your body was small, but your spirit was big, fierce and unafraid. 

‘We called you Leo, our lion, not for how loud you roared, but for how hard you fought to stay. You knew our voices, you knew our touch, the warmth of our hearts pressed against yours.’ 

He continued: ‘You were held, you were known and you were loved. And though the world only had a brief chance to meet you, you changed it and You changed us. 

‘Now that you rest, we still carry you— in every quiet moment, in the breath between tears, in the space you filled just by being here. our son, our lion— you will always matter. You will always be ours. Rest easy our little boy.’