Army Wife

Being an Army wife of an American Soldier was not the easiest job.

When I was giving birth to my second child, we were in Austin, TX. My first boy was four years old, and my husband had to go to a chaplain school for training to become an Army chaplain. I honestly thought that they would let him go because childbirth was such a huge life event. However, we were not able to have him home. Fortunately, my parents were able to come and help us out with my children during my pregnancy and postpartum recovery. When I went to give birth at the birthing center, my parents were able to watch my children, and I was all by myself. Thanks to technology, my husband Steve was able to join me via FaceTime. My doula was able to give me lots of comfort when I had contractions for more than 15 hours. Who would’ve thought that the second baby would take longer than the first?!?!

With my two little rambunctious boys, I stayed home when and did my best to homeschool them. At times, he would leave for training for a couple of weeks or a month, and I missed him so much. I needed him. Single parenting was no joke. When he came back, I bawled harder than my kids. Haha 😂 He probably was pretty embarrassed when we saw me like that around other soldiers when we went to welcome him.

Then the deployment happened. My husband enlisted back in 2001 and got deployed to Afghanistan then and worked in Iraq as well. After he got married to me, the first deployment was to Kuwait and he was deployed for about a year. Our second boy was only a year old, and he was not able to see a lot of milestones. Even though I packed our suitcases and went to Korea at my parents’ place to live with them while my husband was gone, but my boys surely missed the empty space of Daddy. The regression of my oldest, who then was seven, showed by his starting to pee at night again.