Do You Blame Them????

[Yankeegirl]

Army Base Prepares For Baby Invasion After Troops Return
Doctors Say Surge Biggest Since End Of First Gulf War

POSTED: 12:48 pm EDT July 21, 2004

FORT CARSON, Colo. -- The U.S. Army is preparing for a baby boom at Fort Carson.

About 300 babies are expected to be born in December and January, nine months after the first wave of soldiers from the base returned home from Iraq.

Base doctors say it's the largest number of pregnancies since the end of the first Gulf War.

It's not just soldiers' wives who are expecting. Some of the pregnant women are female GIs who also recently returned from duty in the war zone.

But the birth of the babies may be bitter-sweet for some of the soldiers. A number have been ordered back to Iraq early next year.

[Kiko]

Ft. Campbell too:

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Baby boom looms at Fort Campbell
Birth spike this fall follows 101st's return


By JAMES MALONE
jmalone@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — After returning home in February and March from a grueling tour of duty in Iraq, the 101st Airborne Division has wasted no time getting into a family way.

Fort Campbell is bracing for what recent statistics show would be a record number of newborns in a single month.

About 220 births are expected in November — nine to 10 months after the division's return. That would top the 211 born in January 1992 during "Operation Baby Storm," the name that the post gave the baby boom following Operation Desert Storm.

So overwhelming is the Fort Campbell baby boom that its hospital has contracted to send about 40 women to hospitals in Clarksville, Tenn., and Hopkinsville, Ky., when they deliver in November, post officials said.

Summer Jackson, 25, is getting a head start on many Army wives. Last week, she delivered her first child, a boy, the product of a reunion with her husband, Capt. Brett Jackson, 32, when he was home on leave last fall from his special operations assignment with the Army.

"The day he was to return from his leave, I found out I was pregnant," said Jackson, adding that they were not planning for a child but are overjoyed. "It's no longer him and me: We are going to be a family."

For those soldiers who won't be home for the births, the birthing center at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital on the post has become a high-tech communication center, with the ability to connect the new moms with their husbands by phone. And e-mails of photos of the new arrivals can be sent to dads overseas.

"It's a pretty good feeling, e-mailing them pictures and getting dads on the phone and telling them about the baby and let them hear the baby cry," said Col. Matrice W. Browne, an obstetrician at the hospital.

Blanchfield officials say that even before the boom, theirs was the Army's third-busiest hospital for births, after Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, N.C.

Fort Campbell has been averaging about 133 births a month in fiscal 2003, which ends in October. But its last major birth spike was a dozen years ago.

"We're seeing it again," Browne said with a grin.

But Browne said Blanchfield's boom comes with the prospect of another possible divisionwide deployment overseas. "This population always has that in mind — deployment," she said.

Reasons for the boom

Fort Campbell officials said they believe the boom resulted from a combination of younger families and the extended Iraqi deployment. They said it bucks a trend of declining births and smaller families seen in recent years.


"We have peaks and valleys in our births," said Browne. "When the whole division deploys, there is a longer valley and a huge peak."


Capt. Erin Carter, 28, a Blanchfield nurse who served in Iraq, is due to deliver her second child late this summer. She and her husband, Capt. Keith Carter, who was with the 3-187th Infantry in Afghanistan and Iraq, has since transferred to Fort Carson, Colo., where he is with the 3rd Brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division.


When both Carters deployed to Iraq, they had to leave their daughter, Katherine, with family. Erin Carter returned in June 2003 after serving a three-month tour with the 86th Combat Support Hospital, and Keith Carter returned last August to attend school.


She said they had planned for a second child "once we got really lucky to be in the same country and state again."


But Erin Carter also said the hardships posed by both being eligible to redeploy next spring and with two young children caused her to decide to leave the Army this fall. She said she intends to relocate to Colorado to be with her husband and likely will work as a civilian nurse in a military hospital.


During the time she spent talking with deployed soldiers overseas, she said deployment and the thought of being away from a spouse create a "sense or urgency" in soldiers and often can bring about life changes, such as decisions to start or add to a family or get married.

The cost of the boom

Approximately 10percent of the division's 20,000 soldiers and support troops are women, and about 20percent of Blanchfield's births in the current fiscal year are from soldiers.

That also holds true for the boom months in November and December, hospital officials said. Figures show 2,772 of the 25,360 soldiers at Fort Campbell are women. Overall, about 40percent of the post's soldiers are married.

The Army's budget for obstetrics at Blanchfield is about $6.2million a year, out of the hospital's total medical budget of $107million. The obstetrics department has a staff comparable to that of a hospital serving a midsized city, with 10 obstetricians and 11 midwives.

The Defense Department estimated in 2003 that 90,000 babies were born at various military medical facilities, and obstetrics accounted for up to 40percent of the military family health-care expenses.

Long-distance

parenting

Military wives and spouses receive counseling during childbirth preparation to deal with the possibility that husbands might not be present for the delivery. The military doesn't allow soldiers overseas to return home for births.



Keith Carter, the Colorado-based captain whose wife is expecting in September, said by telephone that he missed his daughter's birth because of a deployment to Afghanistan. But he said he was able to see digital photos of her within four hours.


Carter said he realized there was little he could do for his daughter at the time.

"But I felt like I should be there for my wife," he said. He said the prospect of again being deployed when his wife has a baby "definitely played a huge part in our decision" for her to return to civilian life.

"It's not just the potential (to redeploy)," he said. "You're just waiting. Everybody is going to deploy. It's at the point now if you don't want to have to leave your kids or have both parents leave your kids, you can't be in the Army as a married couple."

If husbands are deployed, spouses and expecting soldiers are linked with support groups, friends and others in a unit's rear guard to line up baby-sitting and help after delivery.

Women soldiers are allowed 42 days of convalescent leave after a birth but may get two more weeks and are considered fully recovered after four months, hospital officials said.

The 101st for several years also has operated a program called STARS — Soldier Training Ability Readiness Spirit — that requires most pregnant soldiers to exercise to help ease their return to duty from the pregnancy.


Jackson said she appreciates the instruction and care she received during her pregnancy. The Army offers a walk-in clinic if expecting mothers are ill and offers a 24-hour help line for pregnant women to talk to a nurse.


"There is always someone for me to call," Jackson said.


But so far, unlike Operation Baby Storm that followed Operation Desert Storm, Fort Campbell physicians have yet to come up with a catchy slogan for babies born during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

http://www.courierjournal.com/localnews ... 10913.html

[Wnghs2007]

WOW!! Lots of Babys. But no as the title says. I dont blame them!