Warning: this one might make you a little weepy. Because no matter your stance on the war in Iraq, the thought of a soldier hundreds of thousands of miles away from home getting a chance to watch his child come into the world is a beautiful one.
And thanks to Freedom Calls, a non-profit that uses donations to provide free videoconferences, internet calls and instant messaging services for troops serving overseas, dads in the sands of Iraq have watched sons born in Louisiana and daughters born in upstate New York. Just this week, Army Medic Christopher Corp heard his son's first cry in a hospital room in Arkansas while serving his duties as a National Guardsman in Iraq.
I've joked before that the people in the room when a mom gives birth does nothing more than "catch" the baby, and the physical part is true. But the chance to be present at the birth of your child is one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments you can never get back. Adoptive parents have told me how jealous they are of my experience, and I've refrained from joking about trading the pain . . . because I wouldn't. The day my daughter was born changed my life and that of my husband not simply because of what the future would hold in store. We were there when life began, when she breathed her first breath and screamed her first scream. We saw life pulsing through that little body.
"To be at home would be better," Corp admitted to a TV crew visiting his wife and newborn son Matthew. "But for what it was . . . it was really great."
Who could argue with that?
Image: Our Military Kids
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