It was obvious to us both that our lives were finally coming together. The only thing missing was children. After a contentious revisiting of their custody arrangement a few years before, Brian and his ex-wife had agreed to a regular schedule: his daughter spent six weeks with us every summer and every other major holiday. For much of the summer, our lives were busy shuttling her to day camp, heading to the pool with Nadean and her kids, going for bike rides and taking the dog to the park, family vacations and trips to see the grandparents. Every other Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break we had a little ball of energy around, forcing us to celebrate. On off years, we were as likely as not to skip the holidays entirely. It simply wasn’t festive to decorate a tree or cook a turkey for two. When Sonja wasn’t with us, Brian, Kelby, and I rattled around in our four-bedroom house (we’d paid for more space by moving to the suburbs, where the commute into the city was awful), never even entering some of the spaces.
After thinking for years that we might never be healthy enough to risk it, we finally decided it was safe to bring a baby into our home. I was close to getting my master’s degree. We both had steady jobs. Our marriage was solid; though we still had occasional arguments, we’d learned to work through them and no longer threatened divorce in regular screaming matches. Brian was more stable overall. Although he occasionally sank into depressions, they weren’t as severe or as long-lasting as they had been before. He was also better at recognizing them when they started, and would see his physician for medication before they worsened. His PTSD symptoms were largely under control. Not only that, but Sonja actually served as a steadying force, her sheer presence forcing Brian to remember that the future was coming whether he believed in it or not. Perhaps, we thought, having a baby would do the same thing. We were ready.
I stopped taking birth control, excited to start a new stage of our lives.
And didn’t get pregnant.
“It might take a few months,” we assured each other.
A few months passed. We went from simply no longer trying to avoid pregnancy to actively trying to get pregnant, monitoring the calendar and scheduling sex. Still nothing.
The memory of my first OB-GYN appointment after I left the Army started flashing in my mind. Brian was still active duty, and we were both getting all our medical care at Walter Reed. Every time I showed up for myself, I was wracked with guilt: seeing amputees, young troops with severe burns, and uniformed personnel who were newly blind and just learning to walk with canes made me loath to come in at all. How could I take up even a moment of a doctor’s time complaining about my allergies when these wounded warriors needed care? So by the time I made it from the parking garage through the lobby to the gynecologist’s office, I was already feeling rattled.
In her office, she went through the standard series of questions about my history. Then she asked, “Do you plan to have children?”
I shrugged. “Sure. In a few years, I guess.”
The doctor pulled her glasses to the tip of her nose and tilted her head so she could look me in the eyes, quirking her eyebrows up slightly. She didn’t say anything, just appraised me quietly for a moment, but I could see what she was thinking: “You’re not getting any younger.”
I was horrified. ‘How dare she!’ I thought, ‘I’m not even thirty! There’s plenty of time!’
Three years later at age thirty-two, remembering that moment, I was plagued with guilt. Had I waited too long? Was it from the deployment? Was it Brian? He’d told me once that he’d stood in front of a piece of radar equipment on purpose right after his divorce so he could never have any more kids. Had it worked?
After a year, we made an appointment to see a specialist. The doctor ran a series of tests on both of us (mine unpleasant and invasive, Brian’s a simple variation on a standard and enjoyable activity), and saw no reason that we shouldn’t be pregnant—but we weren’t. It was time to try interventions. After a series of injections, I went in for an attempt at IUI (intrauterine insemination)—the “turkey baster” method, in which the doctor aimed the payload at exactly the right location at precisely the right moment. Brian held my hand. “This isn’t quite how I pictured getting you pregnant,” he murmured, kissing my forehead.
I didn’t get pregnant.
It was a relatively expensive procedure, and Tricare didn’t cover it—they only covered infertility testing, not treatment. The next step, in vitro fertilization or IVF, would be even more expensive, and it wasn’t covered either.
I reached out to the VA. At the big conference I’d spoken at, a presenter had specifically said VA covered infertility treatment for women veterans, so I went to my local VA Medical Center. The doctor assured me they did not cover infertility treatments. “Are you sure?” I pressed. She was sure, she said, but would have her nurse look into it. The nurse called to confirm that they didn’t.
When I bumped into the woman who had made the presentation a few weeks later, I told her about my experience. She pursed her lips in frustration and wrote down the name of the hospital. Within days, I got a call: “Ms. Williams? I was mistaken. VA does cover some infertility treatments.”
I contacted the specialist’s office, and the billing department said under no circumstances would they take money from the VA. “That doesn’t make any sense!” I said. “You’re telling me that if the VA sent you a check you would refuse to cash it?” It was baffling, but that was how the system worked. The clinic required an up-front global fee to cover the entire procedure. VA would only reimburse per procedure. I couldn’t pay up-front and have VA reimburse me. There was no way to make the system work. I tried contacting other infertility clinics in the area, and eventually gave up in frustration.
“It’s just not fair!” I complained to Brian. “We did everything right! We waited until we were ready. We have a house, good jobs. I have a master’s degree. We did what we were supposed to do!”
He patted my hand awkwardly. “I’m sorry, honey.”
It seemed as if the universe was trying to send me a message: I wasn’t meant to be a mother.
RIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 2009, I learned that a close relative of mine, Anne, was pregnant and had decided to place the baby for adoption. After thinking about it for a week or so, I couldn’t resist calling. “Is it true?” I asked her mother.
She sighed. “Yes. I don’t like it, but what can I do? She’s made up her mind!”
“Brian and I have been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant for two years.”
“I didn’t know that!”
“Well, we didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want everyone to ask me if I was pregnant every single time I saw them!”
“I understand that.”
“Do you think,” I paused, took a breath, plunged on, “do you think she’d consider letting us adopt the baby?”
“You know, I’m not sure,” she said. “Let me talk to Anne about it.”
Over the next few days, I had a series of conversations with Anne, her mom, and my husband. Brian had been opposed to the idea of adoption when I’d first suggested it; the thought of not knowing a baby’s background put him off. This was different—we knew the birth mother, were confident she had a healthy pregnancy. We were warming to the idea, getting used to it. Finally we got the call: “Anne wanted me to tell you that she and the birth father have agreed to place the baby with you and Brian. But you should know: she’s being induced in a week.”
I sucked in a deep breath. That was much sooner than I’d expected—hardly any time to prepare. That night, I talked to Brian. “I’m sorry to have to pressure you, but we have to decide. Now.”
He stared into my eyes for a long moment, then reached out and took my hand. “Okay,” he said, “let’s do it.”
With that, we dove into a flurry of activity: cleaning out a bedroom that had been collecting household detritus, booking plane tickets, finding out what was required legally to bring home the baby across state lines, researching what the process would be to formally adopt him down the road. I was too busy to even fret about the upcoming major change in our lives—there was simply too much to do to spend any time thinking. We bought nothing and told no one, afraid that Anne might change her mind. And then we were in Texas. Our hotel was in a dry county, so we couldn’t even soothe our nerves with beers. Brian and I spent some time talking to Anne and the birth father, getting to know one another.
The next day we were holding a tiny baby boy in our arms.
Our friends and family rallied immediately to support us when we announced the news. The day we got home from the airport, there were boxes with baby items waiting on our porch. Some of the Honeybadgers rallied to hold a baby shower within weeks. Everything was a blur of diapers and bottles, rocking and swaddling. Kelby barked at us every time Duncan cried for the first two weeks. “Is she angry at him for making noise, or at us for not being able to fix him?” Brian asked.
“I don’t know—I’m pretty sure she thinks she’d be able to take better care of him than we are!” I joked.
Zoe flew out for a long weekend. She even put Duncan’s bassinet in her room and gave me an incredible gift: two full nights’ sleep. While we sat together cooing over my new baby, I almost couldn’t believe how much our lives had changed. Six years earlier, we’d been in Mosul together, trying to intercept and translate enemy communications. Now we were both mothers, trying to decode cryptic messages from babies—a whole new challenge. In many ways, war seemed easier, less complicated. You only have one real goal: survival. If you fuck up, you die. But if I fucked this up, an innocent baby would suffer . . . and there were so many more things that it seemed I might fuck up! I’d met Zoe’s kids, and they were both polite, happy, energetic boys. Hopefully, since my best friend—with whom I shared so much in common—was adjusting well to being a mother, I would too.
Throughout those first few weeks, I was wildly grateful that Brian had already been through this once before. Everything about caring for a newborn was terrifying since there had been no time for me to read any baby books. “His poop—it looks like tar! Is that normal?”
“Yep, that’s normal.”
“Duncan’s hair is falling out! Is that normal?”
“Yup, that’s normal too.”
“What are those tiny bumps on his face?!”
“Baby acne. Don’t even ask—yes, it’s normal.”
Brian was a wonderful father, snuggling Duncan, changing diapers, getting up for midnight feedings. He was more patient than I was during long crying fits. The total responsibility of caring for a newborn drew him—drew both of us—out, prevented the tendency toward self-absorption and introspection. “It’s hard to be self-centered when you’re worrying about a baby,” Brian mused. “Can you believe how even though he’s so tiny, he’s so much bigger than we are?” I smiled, understanding exactly what he meant. Duncan’s whole life stretched out before him, and we had been entrusted with helping him begin it. We couldn’t let our pasts bury us—if Duncan needed something, we had to put our own bullshit aside and care for him.
Part of the reason we got Kelby was to help Brian—but it didn’t work.1 Although he’d thought the need to care for her would force him to go for walks, in the end he would just let her out into the yard. But it was different with Duncan. It’s impossible to ignore a crying baby. And the love of a baby is like no other—it is offered with no judgment, no conditions, no expectations. It is a gift so freely given that reciprocation is impossible to deny. There was no flattened affect when Brian gazed into the adoring eyes of his son; it softened him, opened him.
Gazing at our son inspired me to get physically active again, too. I wanted to set a good example for him and stay healthy enough to be part of his life far into the future. Lacking the camaraderie and incentives of staying in shape provided by the Army, I’d been unable to stick with a solid exercise routine. Duncan was motivation, but I needed a goal—so I trained for and participated in a sprint-distance triathlon in our neighborhood. Accomplishing it felt great, and I slowly started getting back into shape.
Not long after we brought Duncan home, Brian had knee surgery to repair an ACL he tore when he took up kickboxing. And weeks later, he started a new job in the Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs at the Department of Veterans Affairs. I worried that all these major life events piled so close together—surgery, a new baby, a new job—would throw off his routine and send him into a tailspin. But he rallied, adjusting remarkably well to the new schedule. After teasing me for years about going to bed early (“I know you don’t like to have fun, Kayla!”), having to get to the office on time—and get up at night to feed a hungry infant—forced Brian to turn in early, too.
Instead of working from home, Brian had to commute to an office—a long process that involved driving to a park and ride, taking a bus to a metro stop, and taking the train the rest of the way into the city. We both worried about how he would handle the bus—but he was able to manage his anxiety. He carried a little vial of Valium religiously, but its mere presence was usually talisman enough to keep panic attacks at bay. Occasionally he had days where it was simply too much to bear, and we would carpool in to my office, where he could pick up a different train. But generally he coped fine. We marveled at how far he had come—for years, the prospect of getting on a bus had been inconceivable. Now it was a daily occurrence.
Brian enjoyed working at the VA, by and large. Rather than pushing for changes from the outside, he was able to work toward them from inside the system. There were other young veterans of OIF and OEF in his office, and they were all equally enthusiastic about making a positive difference for vets. I’d been appointed to the VA Advisory Committee on Women Veterans, and I too gained a window into the system. It was clear that Secretary Shinseki was passionate about improving the department and caring for all veterans. And this wasn’t just lip service—as a partial amputee and the former Secretary of the Army, Shinseki was deeply invested in changing the relationship the VA had with veterans and ensuring they were well cared for.
The work was interesting, and Brian’s experience working on the Hill at VoteVets meant he already had contacts and knew how the system worked—the learning curve wasn’t as steep as he had feared it might be. And the VA was accommodating of service-connected disabilities. There was no discrimination if he needed to take time to handle medical or psychological issues. Rather than being leery of hiring those with war wounds, VA actively sought out disabled veterans.
WHEN DUNCAN WAS ABOUT ten months old, I came down with a nasty cold. Like most kids who go to day care, he seemed to bring home a new bug every few weeks. Trying desperately to control my symptoms, I popped Sudafed constantly.
After a couple of days, something started to tug at the edges of my consciousness. I checked a calendar. My period was late. That never happened.
After Duncan was born, we hadn’t started using birth control again, but we also hadn’t been actively trying to get pregnant. After trying unsuccessfully for so long, we just assumed it would never happen. I dug out a leftover test kit and peed on the stick. Within minutes the sign was clear: I was knocked up. My first panicky thought was that all the cold medicine might have harmed the embryo. Why hadn’t I paid more attention to the calendar?
Brian walked into the bathroom, just home from work. “Hey, honey! What’s up?”
Automatically, I hid the stick behind my back. “Uh . . .” I mumbled.
He squinted at me. “You okay?”
“Um . . .”
“This is a good thing!” I told myself. “Why are you hiding this?” After trying so hard to avoid pregnancy for so many years, I hadn’t quite wrapped my brain around the concept: this was something we wanted. I handed Brian the stick. “Happy birthday!”
“What’s this?” my husband asked.
“I’m pregnant.”
“Are you sure?!”
“Well, that’s what the test says. Are you happy?”
“I’m not sure how I feel. This is so unexpected. And Duncan is still so little . . .”
We looked at the baby. He was unrolling the toilet paper and giggling.
“But we wanted this, didn’t we?” I asked. “I mean, we didn’t start using birth control again.”
“Well, it’s been almost three years since you stopped. I guess I just didn’t think it would happen. Let’s see what the doctor says. Those tests can be wrong, right?”
It was confirmed: I was pregnant. In a year and a half, we would go from zero babies to two. And this time, I had a full pregnancy to fret about what was coming.
Would we be able to manage it? How would Brian cope when I went into labor? What if he had a panic attack and I had to handle it all alone?
“I’ll be fine,” he reassured me. “I catastrophize about stupid things, but when it’s serious I do fine.”
Nervous, I hired a doula. “Just in case,” I told him.
After doing a lot of reading, I’d decided to try for a natural childbirth. I hate catheters and wanted the freedom to walk around in case my labor slowed. Choosing a midwife seemed the best way to maximize the chances for a positive experience. Jen had horrified me with part of her birth story: “The doctor didn’t warn me he was going to do an episiotomy, just went in there with a scalpel. Seeing the blood spray reminded me of seeing blood splatter when the IED went off in Afghanistan and I almost lost it.” I was determined to have a provider who would communicate with me better.
It went remarkably smoothly. Reluctant to get turned away if we arrived too soon, I resisted going to the hospital until Brian put his foot down. “We are leaving. Now.” They admitted me immediately. When the time came to push a few hours later, I’d never experienced so much pain or felt more helpless. The knowledge that there was no possible way I could protect myself was nerve-wracking: my body was committed to one thing only, and I was completely dependent on those around me. Brian was fully involved and never flinched; he stayed right by my side and supported me as Alayna entered the world.
When our newborn daughter was placed on my chest, he kissed my cheek. “You did great, honey.”
“So did you,” I said. “So did you.”
1. I wish we had gotten a trained and certified dog. Several organizations, including http://paws4people.org, specifically prepare dogs to work with veterans struggling with PTSD, and anecdotally it is extremely helpful. When you have a rescue dog with her own psychological problems . . . not so much.