This Child of Mine pt1

Sunflower field on our way to Orange, France

Husband and I were both deployed to southern France, living
in a small hotel room. We were both in the Air Force and supporting a mission
in Northern Africa. We worked on the same aircraft, but in different
capacities. I was a flyer and he was an electrician. Unfortunately, the people
in charge decided to put the maintenance crew in a hotel 45 minutes away from
the aircrew. This didn’t seem to be “fair” so we convinced those charged to let
us bunk up together. We told them we would be saving the Air Force so much
money on hotel costs, and my sweet husband agreed to ride his bicycle to work
every day. We also agreed to both volunteer to go downrange together after we
left the joyous mission that was Southern France. It worked! They moved him in
and we sweet-talked the hotel staff in to storing his bicycle in an outside
utility closet while he slept.

Wine tasting in the Côtes du Rhône area.

Côtes du Rhône wine country

We had a glorious month together! I had already been there
for a few months prior to his arrival and I had learned how to spend my down
time like the French; lounging on the beach and eating way too many crepes. We
kayaked to a secret beach in Cassis. Drank wine from wineries I find on the
shelves at Safeway. It truly was a magical time. Yes, I worked hard. We all
did, and I was exhausted, but exhausted from work and happy. Oh, so very, very
happy.

Old Court of Justice, Marseille

Visiting Marseille

Living the life at my favorite beach

Then, one day, my life changed forever.  I had just gotten off a flight were I had lost

my cool with another jet. No, nothing terrible happened except I screamed at an

F-16 pilot from the privacy of my extremely loud plane. See, I was a boom

operator on the KC-135. We refueled planes in the air. Literally, a flying gas

station. Sometimes a cocky, or stressed, who knows what really was going on,

pilot would do things that really could frustrate us aerial refuelers. I

regularly ran into issues because I’m a girl, and if you haven’t ever met me in

real life, I kind of have a high pitched voice. Not all young men like to take

commands from a woman that sounds like a teenager. Anyway, I digress…  So the flight was less than great. I got mad and cried, and the girls up front were hurting!! In the KC-135, a boom operator

has to lie on their stomach and look out the bottom of the plane. So I was lying

right on the girls and they were hurting!!

Refueling an F-16

 I cried, I yelled, I came back from work and had 30 minutes before I had to be back on crew rest, meaning no drinking, and I had myself a nice cocktail. As I sat outside in that glorious,

windy, Southern France evening air, I replayed the events of the day. I had a

firm talking to myself about loosing my cool, crying, and once again yelling to

no one in the back of the plane. As I sat there I realized that maybe my

breasts hurting so bad was not normal. As I sat there I realized that I might

by late. I looked at my empty glass and immediately felt guilty. What if I was

pregnant?! I then lit a cigarette. Yes, I know its terrible, but that is what

people that smoke do. When we get stressed we smoke. (Yes, I quit!)

Stock photo of our "home" in France

I went up the elevator to the 3^rd floor, unlocked

my hotel room, and woke my sleeping husband. I relived the events of the day

and then told him my realizations. He was up and dressed before I could even

tell him that I needed him up and dressed. We drove to the local grocery store

and scoured the isles. When I say scoured I mean it. In southern France, things

are in FRENCH. No “white washing” here. I prayed I was grabbing the pregnancy

tests and not one of those ovulating things, and we drove back to our home.

I knew from past experience that you are supposed to pull

that magic stick out only in the morning when things are more concentrated, but

holy cow! How could I wait until morning? Good thing I bought the two pack,

just in case. I remember doing what you do, and staring at the stick. You know

those ones that say “pregnant” or “not pregnant” digitally? Well that was the

kind we had, except it didn’t say “pregnant” or “not pregnant”. It said

something else entirely. Something foreign. (get it) It was in FRENCH!! I

quickly came out of the restroom frantically telling Husband to find the

directions. Surely if everything in the US is in 10 different languages, then

the French will have to go through that too, right? Well, luckily my

assumptions were right and we didn’t have to wait long to know the answer. We

were Pregnant! I screamed, I cried, I just had so many emotions. What a

glorious day! We were going to make an US. I remembering feeling like I was

full of oxygen in a way I never had been before. I swear I had so much air in

my body that I could float if I wanted to.

This wasn’t my first pregnancy though. A few years before,

and another life altogether, I had also had an exciting day. That day, and that

child, has a story all its own and I promise to tell it, but I thought of this

baby that I never got to hold almost immediately. The fear set in and mixed

together with my excitement so much that you wouldn’t have been able to

separate the two, no matter how hard you could have tried. It’s kind of like

putting butter and flour into a kitchen-aid and mixing them on high for a few

minutes.  Whenever I felt a moment of

joy, I also felt a moment of sorrow, and fear.

I was supposed to fly not too many hours later, but I

couldn’t get myself to do it. Yes, it was against the rules, but the thought

crossed my mind that maybe I should wait for an official test before I stopped

flying. The fear overrode my thoughts and I knocked on my superior’s door and

told him the news, swearing him to secrecy. I barely slept that night for

excitement.

A boy or a girl? I swear my first baby was a boy and I call

him Jake. Did Jake know that I was about to have another? Would this baby be

blonde, like me, or brunette, like my husband? I searched the Internet for

anything and everything I could read about pregnancy. Due date calculators,

names and Chinese gender tests. What else could I do when I am stuck in a

hotel, in a foreign country, my husband at work, and the time difference too

great to call my parents?

The next day was filled with phone calls, tears of joy,

dancing around everywhere I went. I went in to take my official pregnancy test

and hilariously I had to do that in a port-o-potty. Yup, I peed on a stick in a

foreign language and then in a port-o-John. When I returned to the hotel there was a crowd outside waiting to hear the news. The word had traveled fast and everyone was overjoyed for us! Baby had somehow eared the name “pickle” and

that pickle was already loved by so many.  

I love that this story has so many uncharacteristic details

to it. Honestly though, everyone’s stories are different in some way or another

are special to them. I wish I could tell you that I had a perfect pregnancy and

I fell into motherhood painlessly, but that would be a lie. Pregnancy was hard

on me and becoming a mother wasn’t as easy as I had always imagined it would

be. I can tell you that it all got better and I have never had a day where I

didn’t love my children with every ounce of my being. I am going to tell you

about those dark days and what it means to have more than one child, but

that is a story for another day…