Special delivery for Fort Bragg moms

With her husband fresh out of airborne school, Ashley McNeill arrived at Fort Bragg days ago.

Originally from Harrisburg, Virginia, and 25 weeks pregnant, McNeill decided to attend a USO Special Delivery Baby Shower hosted by the USO of North Carolina on Thursday at Fort Bragg’s Iron Mike Conference Center.

“I have a lot of nerves,” McNeill said.

Finding out she was pregnant as soon as her husband left for basic training a few months ago, she said she didn’t notice much of a difference early into her pregnancy.

“I gained no weight,” she said. “Then I’d go and see an ultrasound of this baby and I was like ‘Oh, it’s a baby,’ but he just started kicking now and my husband felt him, and now that I’m actually looking for hospitals and doing more baby stuff, then it’s hitting me a lot.”

That’s one of the reasons why the USO of NC hosts the annual baby shower and brings in New York Times bestselling author Heidi Murkoff, said Renee Lane, Sandhills area director for the USO of North Carolina.

Murkoff is a coauthor of the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” book series geared toward families expecting a new baby.

“We have an extraordinary number of young families serving away from home, away from their families and from different parts of the country and from different parts of the world,” Lane said. “So these types of events — especially this USO 'What to Expect' baby shower — brings it all home for them, connects them to friends, it connects them to people that they may not have met before, and it connects them to an expert, Heidi Murkoff.”

Murkoff partnered with the United Services Organizations starting about seven years ago and has hosted baby showers across the world, including several at Fort Bragg.

The USO partnership started when she was asked to give books away for a baby shower at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

“We hopped on a plane and went to a baby shower, gave the books, too, and as soon as I hugged all those moms I decided we had to do this more often," Murkoff said. "So we’ve been doing it ever since. We went to the Pentagon and met with all the branches and said, ‘How can we do this all the time?’ And they suggested we partner with the USO.”

Between cake, games and gift bag and book giveaways, Murkoff fields questions from expecting mothers, postpartum mothers and even mothers in their third, fourth and fifth pregnancies.

“Every pregnancy is different ... even if you’re pregnant for the third time, it could be a completely different experience, and your second baby may be completely different from your first,” she said. “So I think that’s why you never really know what to expect, but you can hopefully understand that there’s a wide range of normal and that as long your baby and your pregnancy falls within that wide range, you’re good.”

The idea for the book series started with Murkoff’s own pregnancy in the 1980s and three months into her marriage.

Right before she went into labor with her first daughter, she delivered the book proposal for a month-to-month guide about pregnancy and postpartum for moms and dads.

“There were a myriad of books at that time, and none of them had answered my questions,” she said.

The books center around questions moms may have wondering if what they’re experiencing — from emotions to mood swings or physical symptoms — is “normal,” and provides tips, she said.

“The most important thing I love to do is interact with moms and dads, and that’s why I enjoy these baby showers so much with military moms," Murkoff said. "And being pregnant is hard enough under the best of circumstances ... but when you’re far from your family and your friends and your support, and your partner is deployed, that just makes it exponentially harder, and that’s why we do these special deliveries.”

She said she hopes mothers make friends and connections at the baby showers, and that she’ll field questions after through her social media pages. There's also a “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” phone app.

Those connections are exactly what McNeill said she was looking for, as she sat at a table with Zuriah Harris, who is 27 weeks into her pregnancy.

“Every day I wake up like, ‘OK, you’re having a baby,” Harris said. “But I don’t think it’s really settled in, until I finally have the baby in my hands.”

Harris, whose husband is a soldier with the 82nd Airborne Division, has been at Fort Bragg for a couple of years and said she finds support from her coworkers.

However, the majority of her family is about five hours away in Virginia.

"I’m still learning, and I’ll continue to learn, but I think this is good for our community,” she said of the baby showers. “For them to grow events like this for first-time moms or moms who don’t have such a strong support system here, it’s awesome.”

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.