Daddy Update

JB's tasking has been cancelled.

I don't think I mentioned it on the blog simply because it didn't seem appropriate to "put it out there" when it hadn't happened yet, but two weeks before I was to leave for Florida, JB was told he was going to deploy to ... Botswana. The deployment wasn't supposed to be long. A few weeks. But the thing was, they couldn't tell him exactly when it would happen. They just told him he'd get 48 hours notice. He was to be a doctor for a group of Americans there. "Start preparing," they told him, and JB began using his limited free time to get all his "doctor supplies" ready to go. It was one of the reasons he opted to not try to take us back to America. There were just too many things he needed to get done on the island.

But we just found out a few days ago that the deployment has been cancelled, and he will not, in fact, be going to Botswana. He's a bit disappointed as it was right up his "wilderness medicine fellowship" alley. But we are glad that it didn't come down to him having to ask to have the tasking reassigned because the baby was due to be born.

This may be the longest the kids and I have ever been away from JB. In the end, it will be right around five weeks. I know this is nothing compared to what most of my fellow military wives have done so I won't even contemplate complaining. But we do miss him and do wish we could all be together.

Three out of our four children have been born "away from home." Isaac was adopted so he was delivered in South Florida while we resided in northern Florida. Abigail was delivered in Germany while we lived in Turkey. And this baby will be born in South Florida while we live in the Azores. I so wish we could be together as a family before baby arrives, in our own home, doing the "normal" things you do during the weeks leading up to a birth.

But our lives have been anything but ordinary. And this will be just part of our story. Another baby born in a non-traditional way. Staying with my parents has been going fantastically. Sure we've added 4 people to their quiet home of 2, but their house holds us well, and the help they are providing me has been incredibly appreciated.

C-section is currently scheduled for September 4th. My new doctor is great, and he thinks that this baby is definitely going to be big. (Obviously not a surprise to our genetics.) I'm at less than a month now and counting the days (maybe even the hours?) until little girl Kitsteiner, who is still nameless, arrives.