Before she goes to bed every night, Lea Koch puts her 2-month-old baby to sleep next to one of her husband’s heavily worn T-shirts. Sealed tightly in a Ziploc bag earlier that day, the shirt smells intensely of her husband who neither she, nor her baby, will see for another eight months.
It’s a familiar technique for military families with newborn babies and deployed parents. Lea uses this method hoping that her baby will feel a sense of familiarity with his father when he returns home from his 10-month deployment in Kuwait. Because her son, Joe, was born only a few weeks before his father left, he must rely on the scent of his T-shirts and his dad’s voice over FaceTime and Skype to familiarize himself with one of the most important people in his life.
Almost one year ago, Lea and her husband, Tony Koch, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, received some of the greatest news of their lives — Lea was pregnant with their first child. One week later, Tony found out that he would be deployed later that year. In late August, Lea gave birth to a healthy baby boy, and three weeks later, Tony was deployed to Texas, and soon after to Kuwait for 10 months.
According to the Department of Defense, as of August 2015, there were approximately 1.4 million people in the U.S. Armed Forces who chose to dedicate their lives to service — an incredible act of love and sacrifice for their country. Behind each of these 1.4 million men and women, there is a spouse, a child, a parent or a friend that displays a special type of love, sacrifice and support that makes their service possible.
Before deployment, Lea and Tony understood the circumstances of their situation — Lea would have to raise their newborn baby as a single mother for almost a year until Tony would be able to return home. When Lea made the decision to marry Tony, she understood the sacrifices that she would have to make as a military spouse, but it was not until Tony was deployed that she fully understood the burden she would undertake.
“He is sacrificing his time,” she says. “But I am also sacrificing something as well. I am sacrificing not having my husband here … it’s hard to not have my best friend here,” Lea says.
Professor John Bechtol, assistant dean of students, veterans affairs at UW-Madison and veteran with 22 years of active duty in the U.S. Army, has spent years working with military families. As a veteran himself, Bechtol acknowledges the challenges that active members face, but points to the unique struggles that family members at home deal with.
To ease some of the stress that comes with deployment, Bechtol recommends a few keys to managing the uncertainty that many families experience before and during their loved one’s time overseas. Every military service has “family readiness groups” that take care of logistics like finances, wills and life insurance. Although sometimes forgotten in the midst of deployment, it is important for military spouses to be able to manage all the details at home like paying bills and finding housing. In addition, Bechtol notes that an open line of communication is particularly important for all marriages, but especially those with military spouses.
“Just communicating any concerns and anticipating what the other person is going to be concerned about if you know them well enough,” he says. “And trying to remove uncertainties … If everything else in the household and your life is running fine, and you’re just worried about their well being, that’s as good as it’s going to get.”
Before deployment, Lea and Tony took part in a family readiness program, the “Yellow Ribbon,” which was specific to families with young children. The course included classes and meetings where Tony and Lea could learn about ways to keep their relationship strong and raise their child with a parent overseas. Lea found the course to be particularly useful in regards to meeting other military spouses in a similar situation.
Lea strongly identifies with the concept of being an Army wife and believes that all military spouses connect on a deeper level. Through the course she was able to connect with other men and women who were going through similar situations.
“When you talk to an Army spouse about what you’re going through, they’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to suck, you’re going to cry, you’re going to hate him for awhile, but you’ll get over it,’” she says. “Once he’s back, it’ll seem like the whole time never even happened.”
Bechtol notes that families like Lea’s who are in the National Guard or Army Reserve may face unique challenges. Unlike military families on bases, where members live with, go to school with and spend most of their time with people in their same circumstances, those in the Guard and Reserve do not have such a close community of support.
“For the Guard and Reserve people it’s tough,” Bechtol says. “There’s no one on your street that has any military affiliation … so every day you’re talking to people and [say] ‘Don’t you realize we have people overseas?’ ‘No, not really,’ because it doesn’t matter to them. They don’t see it. They may read something in the news but to them it’s unreal.”
Although Lea may not have the type of support that other military families may see on bases, the families in Tony’s duty station in Wausau, Wisconsin, make an effort to support each other while their spouses are overseas. One of her closest friends from Mauston, Wisconsin, recently had a baby as well, but while her husband was already deployed.
“They were already gone when she had her baby,” Lea says. “And she has another son, so she has two kids right now, she’s by herself — she is Wonder Woman … it must be so hard especially having two [kids] now, I can’t even imagine.”
During Tony’s deployment, Lea has found herself dependent on the love and support of family and friends more than ever, particularly other military families. The small things like being able to shower or go grocery shopping by herself now seem like luxuries to Lea.
“Over time, it will start wearing and tearing on me that every single day I’m constantly by myself and I don’t have time for just me. That’s when friends and family really come in,” Lea says.
Lea recently moved in with Tony’s mother, who quit one of her three jobs to help take care of Lea and the baby, which has eased the burden of raising a 6-week-old alone.
“[My mother-in-law] has been really great,” Lea says. “Even just with the little stuff like holding [Joey] for a few minutes so I can get something to eat … she’s been super helpful.”
Like Bechtol advocates, Lea and Tony try to keep lines of communication open by attempting to text and FaceTime every day. While he’s in Kuwait, Lea admitted that it may be more difficult to stay in contact, but that they would come up with a weekly schedule to talk despite time differences.
“Right now I think [Tony] is putting on his brave face. But I think over time it’s going to become more and more difficult,” Lea says. “Just in the past month he’s been gone, Joey has tripled in size. I think missing things like this is really going to wear on him.”
Despite his “brave face,” Tony admits that he struggles with the notion of leaving his wife and newborn son at home while he is in Kuwait. When Tony returns at the end of July, their son will almost be one years old.
“[The hardest part] is leaving my family,” Tony says. “It’s harder with the baby and stuff knowing that she’s going to have to be alone with him … that makes it a lot worse.”
Recently, Lea returned to work for the first time since giving birth to Joe and has been struggling with leaving her son at day care while she is at work.
“There are things that I’m going through emotionally, like leaving my son with a day care provider and being away from him … I want to be able to talk to Tony about [that,] but it makes him upset because he’s not here,” Lea says. “I’m complaining about being an hour away from my son, and [Tony’s] a zillion miles away.”
Through years of experience, Bechtol has seen the struggles of deployed military members, but admits that he would have a far harder time being the military spouse back in the United States.
“Don’t assume that you’re the only one paying the price … Even though your spouse back in the States has a roof over her head, and dry feet and heat in the winter time — stuff you may not have, don’t assume that it still isn’t hard,” Bechtol says of deployed services members and their perspective on life back home. “Whether through phone calls or emails or letters, you need to support the spouse that’s back.”
After several weeks of Tony’s absence, Lea says that she is finally starting to become accustomed to her temporary life as a single mother and is using all of her strength to make it through the next nine months.
“I give myself something to look forward to every month. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s,” she says. “And when those events pass, I just remind myself that I’m a few days closer to having Tony home again.”
Kate Jungers
Kate is a lover of politics, current events and foreign policy. You can find Kate watching Real Time with Bill Maher, reading Buzzfeed and doing headstands at your local yoga studio. While finishing her senior year at UW-Madison as an intern at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Kate is in the process of applying to law schools which she hopes to attend in the fall.