Washington CNN  — 

“But that’s when I’ll be ovulating,” I protest.

It’s the fall of 2017 and my husband, Fernando, has just told me he has to go overseas for a few days.

The United States Army is really messing with my plan to get pregnant. We’ve just learned he’s likely to deploy very soon and it’s always possible the deployment could be extended, so we’ve decide to accelerate our timeline to try for a baby.

Now, this trip is cutting into the already limited time we have before he deploys. And making a child is not something we can do when we’re on opposite sides of the world. Unless.

“What if we freeze your sperm?” I suggest.

He looks at me funny, but I’m serious. I’m 37. The clock is ticking. And if he can’t physically be here to make this happen, then we’ll just have to find a workaround.

It’s moments like this one that explain why time away from loved ones is the top concern of military families, according to the latest Blue Star Families’ annual Military Family Lifestyle Survey conducted in 2018.

Over half of the more than 10,000 active duty service members and their spouses in the survey consider it a taxing part of their experience with the military. It outpaces concerns about military pay and far outpaces worries about post-traumatic stress disorder.

Military families miss out on experiences that most civilian families do not: birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, funerals and even the births of their children.

Creative logistics

But conceiving a child while separated takes some creative logistics, though I am determined.

I’ve had friends try intrauterine insemination when they’ve struggled to conceive. Why can’t we do it because we won’t be together?

I consult my doctor and she says she can do the procedure, but I’ll need to involve a fertility clinic to process the sperm. But when I call a leading clinic in Washington they quote me thousands of dollars. They will only do what we need as part of a larger infertility treatment and I’ll have to pay for a bunch of other services I won’t even use.

I call another clinic. They say it’s an unusual request but they can do it for a few hundred dollars.

When my husband checks in to the lab a few days later the lab doctor wants to know which of the fertility doctors in the associated clinic is ours. None of them, he explains. We aren’t being seen for infertility.

The lab doctor is adamant that our plan is impossible. Fernando calls me and I have to leave work to go to the clinic and straighten it out. The clinic receptionist has a doctor call down to the lab and confirm our situation. Finally, we proceed.

As we are paying I ask about the placard advertising a military discount. The receptionist tells me it doesn’t apply to this.

A couple of weeks later, when my ovulation test is positive I call the lab to prep “the specimen.” Everything goes smoothly. I pick it up, follow my doctor’s instructions to tuck it in my bra so it stays at body temperature and walk the few blocks to my doctor’s office. A half-hour later I’m walking out.

Military families become familiar with trying to contort their lives around deployments and separations.

Countless military spouse blogs and parenting websites host very engaged discussions about the pros and cons of a service member missing the pregnancy, the birth or the newborn months.

They also talk about the pain of parents — mothers and fathers — returning from deployments to children who don’t recognize them.

Some units allow troops to return for births, but many do not.

My husband returns from his trip and after we wait the requisite number of days, I take a pregnancy test. Negative. I wait a day and take another. Negative.

I’m disappointed. We’ll have one more chance before his deployment, but I try to manage my expectations and raise my spirits with thoughts of meeting my friends out for dinner and being solely in charge of the television remote while he’s away. The weekend before he leaves we relax at a bed and breakfast. Then I see him off at the airport.

After Fernando deploys I’m busy with work and taking care of my stepson, Teddy, a kinetic and fun-loving toddler. On the days Teddy is not in our apartment it is eerily quiet. I burn up the phone lines to my sister, Kelly, who lives in California.

About 10 days into the deployment I’m on the phone, catching up with Kel on a Sunday night.

I take a pregnancy test while we’re talking. Immediately, two double lines. It’s positive. I start crying happy tears.

I tell Kel I’m going to take another test, to be sure.

“Why? They really don’t get it wrong,” she says, laughing.

This is really happening!

Still, I take another test. Double bright blue lines. This is really happening!

I stay up until I know Fernando’s awake and I text him, asking him to FaceTime me.

‘“Is everything OK?” he asks, a little worried.

“Everything’s fine. Just FaceTime me.”

When he does I smile and flip the screen around to reveal the two positive pregnancy tests.

He laughs and we marvel at our good fortune and technology allowing us to share this moment.

Soon the nausea begins. And I’m so exhausted. I don’t much mind my husband missing out on this part. Many nights I go to bed at 8 p.m., right after Teddy. My sense of smell is ultrasensitive. If Fernando were here I would constantly revulse at any vague odor coming off of whatever he was eating for dinner. And he doesn’t have to listen to the heaving sounds I make when I try to brush my teeth. It’s a win-win, I joke to myself.

Time away from loved ones is the top concern of military families, according to the latest Blue Star Families' annual Military Family Lifestyle Survey.

But I miss him when I go for my first ultrasound alone.

“Do twins run in your family?” the nurse asks me.

“No,” I say slowly.

She points out two blobs. Baby A and Baby B.

I text a photo to Fernando right after the appointment.

“It looks like a fava bean,” he texts back.

“You mean two fava beans?” I reply.

We are both shocked and excited. Later he sends me a link to a stroller that can accommodate a 2-year-old and twin babies. There are only a few on the market. It looks like a Death Star on wheels. I wonder how one person can even push the thing.

Two weeks later I am back for a follow-up ultrasound.

The nurse lets Fernando FaceTime in for the check on our babies.

In the first amniotic sac is what looks like a little tadpole with a blinking light on it — it’s heartbeat.

The second sac is empty.

I begin to cry. Fernando is upset. We had already begun imagining our lives with two babies.

The nurse tells me it’s called a vanishing twin and this happens early on in many twin pregnancies.

As I work through my disappointment I am reminded of something Fernando once told me, a phrase used regularly in the Special Forces community about the importance of redundancy: “Two is one and one is none.” I try to focus on how lucky we are to still have one baby.

Fernando returns home after a couple months, only to have to leave again about two weeks later, which is far from ideal, but it gives us time to celebrate that we are expecting a baby.

He comes to an ultrasound with me. The room is cramped and he is in a chair by my feet. He squeezes my ankle when he sees the picture. It actually looks like a baby this time and he or she is almost doing somersaults, though I’m still in the first trimester and I can’t feel the kicks yet.

Last holiday as a family of three

Before Fernando redeploys we celebrate an early Christmas and take photos with Teddy in matching pajamas, our last holiday as a family of three.

When I start to show I send him pictures.

Since I can’t risk a fall, I recruit a friend to get up on a ladder to change my light bulbs and air filters.

Two of my girlfriends, Carol and Kristen, go with me to the ultrasound where I find out the sex of the baby — it’s a boy!

Carol is the first person to feel my stomach when the baby kicks.

I have ceded responsibility of the baby’s first name to my husband, with the agreement that I have veto power. There’s only one name he picks that I love. I run the others by the artists in the CNN makeup room and by week 19, I’m calling him Antonio.

As the nausea subsides and I start to feel better, I really miss Fernando’s company. Adult conversation and a back rub would be really nice right about now.

I visit my in-laws in Texas by myself and show them my growing belly.

At 22 weeks the baby is visibly kicking my stomach. I take a video and send it to my husband, but he can’t make out the kicks.

I ran baby names by the artists in the CNN makeup room. By week 19, I was calling him Antonio.

In week 26, as spring begins, my sister flies in from California to help me move to a new house with more room and fewer stairs.

Finally, at 31 weeks pregnant, I am waiting for Fernando at the airport as he exits the secure area of the terminal. As I give him a big hug, my basketball-sized baby bump presses into him. Last time we saw each other I didn’t look pregnant.

We go out on dates and he is chagrined to find a human-size pregnancy pillow has taken over our bed.

About a month out from my due date, in June, Fernando takes a previously scheduled trip to Japan. My water breaks on a Thursday evening when he’s in Tokyo.

While going through my pregnancy, relying on support from friends, I focused on the fact he would be home from his deployment for the birth. This is not a moment I have prepared to experience without him.

Frantic search for a flight home

I call Carol. I call my doctor. I call my husband. It’s very early in Tokyo and he looks for flights home as Carol and I drive to the hospital.

After more than 22 hours of slow-going labor, one of the residents examines me and is surprised to see my labor has progressed rapidly in the last hour.

Carol looks at the flight tracker on her phone. Fernando’s plane is still in the air.

“I don’t think he’s going to make it,” I say to Carol, tears filling my eyes.

“I don’t think so either, sweet pea,” she says.

The resident goes to get my doctor and a nurse brings a delivery cart into the room.

Fernando walks through the door of the hospital room when I’ve been in labor almost 24 hours.

He gives me a kiss and my doctor orders him to my left. Carol is on my right.

40 minutes later, Antonio arrives.

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