In December of 2023 my husband and I welcomed our first baby into the world. I found out I was pregnant in April that year after completing the wildland firefighter pack test and attending the Nevada Type 3 team meetings. I had planned for a busy year supporting fire and as life does it had a way of laughing and saying oh no you don’t. Our little boy was a sweet and very precious surprise to us. With our surprise of a new member to our family came the anxieties and new feelings of bringing a child into the world of wildfire.
My husband and I didn’t plan on having kids for a couple more years, but you never make plans in this life! One thing I was truly grateful for was the timing of our baby. He would be due in December meaning I didn’t have to stress out about having a baby in the summer and him having to come off of a fire to make it in time for delivery, or just worry about him not being there! I know some women out there have had to add this extra stressor to their pregnancies and oh I feel for you ladies!
Having already been through the loss of one baby, this was a very stressful pregnancy for me. Always the anxiety and feeling of what if I lose this one? What if something happens again. Well we did end up having a scare and we did almost lose our little man. For the same reason that I lost my first baby. Thanks to my doctor and a wonderful maternal fetal medicine clinic and an amazing surgeon, they were able to keep our baby inside my womb for him to grow big enough to be born. He even ended up being a week late!
Being pregnant, especially if you’ve experienced losing a baby before, is very stressful. I truly believe many women don’t get the credit or patience they deserve. If I had to have been pregnant during fire season, I can’t imagine the stress that would have brought on! Guys if your wife or loved one is pregnant, try to give her some grace please! We are dealing with a lot! Including a major shift in hormones and the careers you have chosen just adds to all of it!
I started thinking more and more about the what if’s and the maybe’s. How we need to now to start thinking of a new plan, if God forbid something happened on the line. I started to think about all the things my man was going to miss as our little guy’s Dad. All the milestones and just the days of getting to be with us. My mind went full board nuts! The nights I was up with the worst heartburn ever, my mind would just race with questions and thoughts of how our life was going to change and what life would now become with this tiny human being that was going to be joining us very soon. The hard truth is that as a mom our lives completely change, while our men, they continue on with their career as if nothing happened. Now this isn’t to say that it isn’t harder for them to leave, or that they start to think differently about their career choice, or that fire season just got a little bit harder for them, but us as the wives and mothers, we have to continue to hold the line at home and we just added fuel to the fire with a baby.
As much as I tried to prepare myself for this change in our lives, I don’t think you can truly prepare. You just have to experience it. I’m going to be honest here. This is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. If not the hardest. I never really had any issue with my husband’s choice in career. In fact I’ve always been proud of him and very supportive. I’ve always loved the fact that he gets to do what he is passionate about and that his career is his dream! Like who doesn’t want their dream job?! Well the past 8 months have definitely changed my mind about a lot of things, and this has been the most difficult fire season I have ever had to weather. Raising a baby, especially your first, by yourself absolutely sucks! Especially when all your family lives hundreds of miles away! For the first time I have found myself despising what my husband does. I’ve gotten extremely pissed off at all the extensions that have been occurring every night since June! I have missed him more than ever while he’s been gone on assignment. I never used to get so mad about schedule changes or 1 day off. Well this year, I have been very frustrated with the fact that he’s supposed to be on a 6 and 1 schedule, 6 days on and 1 day off, and that turned into a 12 day on and 1 day off! Like sheesh 1 day? Might as well not have any, because 1 day isn’t much for a new dad and a new baby to be able to bond much at all. Nor is it much time to be a family. Especially if those work days have been super busy! Let alone the toll on not only mine, but his mental health! Least to say it’s been rough, and I never realized it would be like this, nor did I used to care as much.
Babies change everything! Don’t feel bad if you are experiencing the same emotions or feelings as me. These are legit feelings and no doubt about it, this shit is hard! Plain and simple. Life as the wife of a wildland firefighter is hard enough, then you add babies to the mix, and it makes it even harder.
Babies are a wonderful gift and I would never tell anyone not to have them because of the life and careers they have chosen. I am, however, going to tell you that this will not be easy. That babies are hard, but wildland fire babies are even harder! It takes more patience, more resilience, and more strength. This is a crazy life we bring them into and we have to try our best to give them the best life possible, even when they only have one parent for a majority of their upbringing. Just be sure that Dad gets extra love and snuggles with the baby when he is home!
There’s no parenting book out there on how to raise kids of with a wildland Firefighter parent, so we that are, have to share our advice, be each other’s strength, wisdom, and calm in the storms! Find that support system, reach out to other wildland fire families, ask for help, and most of all give yourself grace, love, and know that it’s okay to get angry, to feel frustrated, and sad. It’s also okay to hate the career your husband has chosen! Just don’t keep everything inside! Talk it out with your man and let him know and work through things together. See if he has a coworker that has kids and see if his wife, or husband, can help you out. We are supposed to be a family in this world and that means being there for each other, especially when it comes to children and raising them!