Rhys Carter Packham

It’s been a few days since we welcomed Rhys Carter Packham into our family. We are so thrilled to have our fifth son, and can’t believe how lucky we have been. He is beautiful and perfect.

From Rhys Carter Packham birth

He has some pretty thick dark hair on his head and he’s got some chubby cheeks. He was born at 9:41 am on February 2, 2002 (Groundhogs Day), and came out at a hefty 7lb 12oz (our biggest baby yet), and 20 inches long.

As for the birth story … Aubrey basically had her water break a little bit around 5:45 am, so we woke up and started getting ready with showers and getting dressed, etc. and started timing the contractions. We dropped our kids off at a couple of friends’ houses and were at the hospital by maybe 7:30am. Even though Aubrey’s contractions were coming fairly regularly, I don’t think she thought they were exceptionally strong, so she kept feeling lame for coming to the hospital, though I think deep down she knew the baby was on its way soon. Once we were in the room, her water more fully broke on the floor so we knew for sure it was go time. From that point, her contractions continued to strengthen on a steady basis every few minutes and seemed to get steadily more intense. After a few rather intense contractions, the baby’s head about visible then it crowned and a few pushes later his head was out. His cord was around his neck and they had to cut it before his body was delivered, and when he came out he was a bit “shocked” from the fast dropping into the canal (“precipitous” is the word they used). So, they had to jumpstart his breathing with some positive pressure ventilation, but it took less than a minute before we heard his first scream. That was a sound like no other after seeing him come out not quite responsive. Oh, and obviously when he came out I saw right away it was a boy, and I called out “It’s a boy”, and I wasn’t surprised at all. I guess I recognize the body part quite easily at this point after having all boys.

From Rhys Carter Packham birth

After they got him breathing, they took him off to the special care nursery to make sure he continued to breathe well, etc. so Aubrey and I were not able to just hold him for the first little while. I think we didn’t totally mind this time because Aubrey seemed pretty drained and exhausted from the intense work she had just done, which was awesome to behold. She has delivered five babies now (the last four with no pain medication), and each time it has been beautiful and powerful and frightening to watch, each time bringing tears to my eyes to see her in pain and yet so focused and determined and strong. She is truly amazing. I love that I get to experience this all with her.

From Rhys Carter Packham birth

For the last month or so, we had been pretty sure that we like the name Rhys/Reece if we had a boy, but we’d been struggling with the spelling and also didn’t have a middle name. At one point we were kind of leaning toward Reece and people kept asking, so I went ahead and posted on Facebook that we were calling him Reece. But after a couple days thinking about it and with the official birth certificate needing to be filled out before we left the hospital, Aubrey and I spent some time re-thinking the spelling. We just kept coming back to the more traditional but more unusual and different spelling of Rhys. In the end, we both preferred it much more and realized we’d regret not using that spelling if we went with Reece, which we thought was also nice but just lacked that certain something in our minds. For a middle name we went with Carter, which is a family name on both sides: Aubrey’s grandma’s maiden name (Laurene Grace Carter Smailes), and my great-great-grandma’s maiden name (Junietta Carter Wall). So … we decided on Rhys Carter Packham and we totally love it! We think it fits right in with the rest of our boys’ names and will be a great, strong, and unique name for him to carry through his life.

From Rhys Carter Packham birth

His brothers have been absolutely adorable with him. Although a couple of them were really hoping for a girl (which was cute), they were instantly excited to hear he was a boy. They all love stroking his head and saying hi to him and holding him any chance they can get. When they got home from school on Thursday to find us at home with Rhys, they all ran upstairs and climbed on the bed all leaning over him and saying “hi Rhys!” and stroking his hair. It’s definitely a proud moment to see older siblings so excited for the younger ones. They will be great examples in the younger ones’ lives — examples for good, I’m sure.

From Rhys Carter Packham birth