Family Day at Fort Knox

(Joel's side of the story) (Yes, this is actually Joel telling his side of the story)
Thurs. June 25, 2009 I was sitting in the chow hall about 1/3 of the way through my breakfast and I was looking forward to seeing Julie and Damon and my mother in approx three more hours. My drill sergeant (DS), Drill Sergeant France, comes into the chow hall and asks for Private Bree. I stood up and he said to me "Let's go private, you're done!" I thought I was in trouble or something and I still had a lot of food on my plate so I started handing it off to people around me because you hate to see food go to waste. DS France turns back towards me and yells, "Private leave that, I said you're done! Your wife's in labor! Let's go!" Everyone in the chow hall cheered as I raced out of there right on DS's heels. Within minutes I was in the back of a truck on my way to the hospital. It turns out that Julie had started labor sometime that morning and came to the hospital right on base. My DS told me that they were going to send her to the hospital in a nearby town. My mom was waiting for me when I got there and she told me that they weren't going to move Julie because her water had already broken. So Mom took me up and after ten long weeks of not seeing my wife I saw her for the first time in a delivery room. 40 mins of holding her hand, telling her how much I loved her and missed her, and a few short contractions later Emma Ray cried her first cry in this life. 18 inches long, 5 lbs and 2 ounces or pure beauty. Lucky for us she's got Julie's looks. They told us that at this particular hospital they don't deliver babies earlier than 36 weeks and that if anything was wrong with Emma (because in case you had forgotten she was only a 35 week old baby with a due date around July 28th) that they would have to send her to Louisville hospital where they had a Newborn ICU. I was praying everything would be okay because my family day was only a day long and I wasn't allowed to even go to Louisville. So if Emma went there and Julie followed after I was going to be a little annoyed. Luckily Emma was breathing as if she had been full term and didn't have any problems except for being skinny and tiny. It was an amazing blessing that in all honesty was probably a lot more than I deserved. But the blessings didn't stop there. My first sergeant (1SG) pulled some strings got me a week of paternity leave and set Julie, Emma and me up in a nice hotel on base.
And that's where I am now: in my hotel room, enjoying a family day that turned into a whole family week, loving my beautiful girls and giving more and more thanks to Heavenly Father.

Julie's Side:
I had been looking forward to seeing Joel again for months. Everything was all set for Damon and I to go when a few little things happened that made me start to worry that maybe we shouldn't go. I called my doctor, talked to my parents, prayed about it, and almost didn't fly to Kentucky. Everyone said the things that were happening were a little bit "concerning," but not indicative of labor, so I should just take things easy. I knew that if I didn't go, I wouldn't have the baby and I would spend the next few weeks beating myself up about it. My father gave me a blessing that night and I was told to go and have a "joyful time with my husband in Kentucky." So we decided that I should go, but leave Damon with my family.
Everything went really well the whole way to Kentucky and I figured that as usual, I had just over-dramatized things and I calmed down. Then I woke up in the middle of the night and knew I was in labor for real. I woke up my mother-in-law and she drove me to the hospital on base. They checked me to make sure I was right, and then they gave me a shot of something to try to stop contractions so that we could go to a different hospital. Joel's mom called his DS so that maybe she wouldn't have to go all the way back to base to get him in a few hours. They said that they would bring him over. After about half an hour, the doctor checked me again to see if the drugs were working. They weren't. And then my water broke and they couldn't send me anywhere (I think that kind of freaked them all out). They took me to another room and soon afterwards, Joel came. It was so good to see him and hold his hand the rest of the way.
I have been so amazed by how wonderful people are and how truly blessed we have been. Everything has fallen into place so perfectly that I am sure someone up there has been planning this for a long time. That, and Emma is definitely a Daddy's girl who just couldn't wait to see him. We should be flying back to Utah on Wednesday and Joel ships out to AIT at Ft. Jackson on Thursday, so we are just having a wonderful time enjoying our sweet baby until then.