Paris Hilton was the one who decided to keep her son Phoenix’ birth a secret – even though her husband Carter Reum wanted to tell his family immediately.
The couple ecstatically announced this January that they had welcomed their little bundle of joy into the world via surrogate.
She and Carter hid the baby’s arrival from even their immediate families until right before she broke the news on social media.
Now, in a TikTok sneak peak for their reality show Paris In Love, Carter revealed that the decision to be so private was made by his wife.
He would have preferred to share the news with his loved ones at once, but he understood that she had struggled with fame and decided to be a ‘good teammate.’
Baby mine: Paris Hilton was the one who decided to keep her son Phoenix’ birth a secret – even though her husband Carter Reum wanted to tell his family immediately
Paris in love: She and Carter hid the baby’s arrival from even their immediate families until right before she broke the news on social media
The sneak peek opened on a clip of Paris and Carter sitting in the car together, sometime shortly before Phoenix was born.
‘If people found out, there would be paparazzi all over Cedar’s,’ she fretted. ‘I’m hoping and praying that no one at the hospital tells.’
She went to the trouble of devising a backup plan in case she got spotted: ‘If anyone recognizes me, let’s pretend that it’s our nephew.’
The preview cut to some footage of Paris sitting in her walk-in closet, telling the camera that ‘literally no one knows’ about her baby secret.
‘No one in this house knows. None of the people who work at my media company know. My friends don’t know. My own family doesn’t know,’ she spilled.
Carter, a venture capitalist, shared in a confessional: ‘I don’t think it ever hit me we weren’t gonna tell anyone. That was really Paris.’
He acknowledged: ‘My initial inclination was to tell my family and get everyone excited. Hers was to kind of hold the secret, but she’s had to go through life having to protect herself, so I was gonna do everything I could to be a good teammate.’
Paris initially was assiduously private about her baby, waiting until a month after the birth announcement to even disclose his name.
Candor: Now, in a TikTok sneak peak for their reality show Paris In Love, Carter revealed that the decision to be so private was made by his wife
Plotting: The sneak peek opened on a clip of Paris and Carter sitting in the car together, sometime shortly before Phoenix was born
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she explained why she took such drastic measures as hiding the news from her family.
‘My entire life has been so public,’ she said. ‘I’ve never had anything for myself. We decided that we wanted to have this whole experience to ourselves.’
While the surrogate was in labor, Paris was so determined to protect her secret that she even went to the bother of disguising herself with a brunette wig and checking into the hospital under an alias.
Her decision was especially notable considering how close she is to her family, particularly her sister Nicky Hilton Rothschild and their mother Kathy Hilton.
However tension flared up between mother and daughter in November 2022 when Kathy let slip to E! News that IVF had been a ‘struggle’ for Paris.
‘I don’t know where she got that,’ Paris shot back in a TMZ interview the following day. ‘It’s never been a struggle at all.’
When Paris announced the arrival of her firstborn child, all she said was ‘You are already loved beyond words,’ on a photo of the baby’s hand holding Paris’s finger.
On an episode of her podcast This Is Paris, she spilled that Phoenix was ‘like over a week old’ before she told Kathy and Nicky about his birth.