Integrate, Reintegrate

Last Friday, I attended a presentation focused on reintegrating soldiers into the family after deployment. It was presented by Ruth Paris, PhD and Melissa Acker, Psy.D at The Infant Parent Training Institute.

I’d met active duty military families as a childbirth educator and a doula. I hadn’t realized the complexity of challenges they experience starting before and then of course, during deployment. So much basic information is uncertain… where the soldier actually is and it’s hard to communicate, when/how can they keep in touch?

I thought of Fay (not her real name) and her baby daughter, a family I worked with in 2002. I reviewed my notes from that time. She and her partner had barely time to ‘integrate’ as a family (much less reintegrate) and questions about how to keep connected with him were always in the air. That was my challenge as a postpartum support person.

“That November morning, when I accompanied Fay and her baby home from the hospital, the air was heavy and damp. I said that was appropriate… to bring a newborn from one moist environment into another. Fay said the yellow leaves on bare branches were like ribbons for soldiers’ homecomings. It was a bittersweet image; her sweetheart had been deployed two days ago.

He had been here for the birth though he had to leave soon after. I can not imagine what he was experiencing. Now her new baby was in a cool, grey, damp place and her sweetheart was in desert temperatures, not even a wisp of baby breath. Fay wanted to send videos and baby-scented blankets every day (not always possible). “

We had made sure they had privacy as a new family in the first hours, had them hold, touch and smell their new baby and take pictures. Smell is so fundamental to memory and feeling. Fay gave him their baby’s first little shirt to take with him.

Keeping in touch is so essential yet it’s very difficult to have regular contact. I’ve read how some soldiers videotape themselves reading bedtime stories, or have homework assignments sent ahead in order to share that with their children.  However, in the first weeks with a newborn, it is a different situation. How do we honor this moment of simultaneous joy and loneliness?

“Do what you can, where you are and with what you have.” Theodore Roosevelt said, and that was a guiding motto. I could help her navigate the parts that were familiar to me… new motherhood and moving. I felt it was important to be present in the moment, to appreciate this fragile time.  We made small written and photographic keepsakes to send and share.

These partly answered her deeper needs, we hope they reached her partner. They were, however, a way to reflect, remember and when he would return, to help them reintegrate.