By James Malone
Gannett News Service

U.S. Army Capt. Brett Jackson, based in Fort Campbell, and his wife, Summer, had a baby a few days after this photo was taken June 23. Gannett News Service/PAT MCDONOUGH

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - After returning home in February and March from a grueling tour of duty in Iraq, the 101st Airborne Division wasted no time getting into a family way.

Fort Campbell is bracing for what recent statistics show will be a record number of newborns in a single month.

About 220 births are expected in November, nine to 10 months after the division's return.

That would top the 211 born in January 1992 during "Operation Baby Storm," the name that the post gave the baby boom following Operation Desert Storm.

So overwhelming is the Fort Campbell baby boom that its hospital has contracted to send about 40 women to hospitals in Clarksville, Tenn., and Hopkinsville, Ky., when they deliver in November.

For those soldiers who won't be home for the births, Blanchfield Army Community Hospital has become a high-tech communications center, with the ability to connect the new moms with their husbands by phone.

Also, e-mail photos of the new arrivals can be sent in a short time to dads who are overseas.

"It's a pretty good feeling, e-mailing them pictures and getting dads on the phone and telling them about the baby and let them hear the baby cry," said Col. Matrice W. Browne, an obstetrician at the hospital.

Blanchfield officials say that even before the boom, theirs was the Army's third-busiest hospital for births after Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, N.C. The Defense Department estimated in 2003 that 90,000 babies were born at various military medical centers, and obstetrics accounted for up to 40 percent of the military family health-care expenses.

Fort Campbell officials said they think that their boom resulted from a combination of younger families and the extended Iraqi deployment. They said it bucks a trend of declining births and smaller families seen in recent years.

"We have peaks and valleys in our births," Browne said. "When the whole division deploys, there is a longer valley and a huge peak."

Capt. Erin Carter, 28, a Blanchfield nurse who served in Iraq, is due to deliver her second child late this summer. She said her husband, Capt. Keith Carter, who was with the 3-187th Infantry in Afghanistan and Iraq, has since transferred to Fort Carson, Colo., where he is with the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division.

When both Carters deployed to Iraq, they had to leave their daughter Katherine with family. Erin Carter returned in June 2003 after serving a three-month tour with the 86th Combat Support Hospital, and Keith Carter returned last August to attend school.

But Erin Carter also said the hardships posed by both being eligible to redeploy next spring and with two young children caused her to decide to leave the Army this fall. She said she intends to relocate to Colorado to be with her husband and likely will work as a civilian nurse in a military hospital.

Keith Carter missed his daughter's birth because of a deployment to Afghanistan. But he said he was able to see digital photos of her within four hours.

He said the prospect of again being deployed when his wife has a baby "definitely played a huge part in our decision" for her to return to civilian life. "It's at the point now if you don't want to have to leave your kids or have both parents leave your kids, you can't be in the Army as a married couple."