Is it luck, or maybe something more?

There's always a ton of talk about trying to plan things, and what I really hate is the hopeless group consensus of military wives these days. "You might as well just get married at the courthouse, because by the time you plan a real wedding, he'll just be deployed for it." "You might as well decide whether you want your husband there for your pregnancies or your births, because you won't get both." "You will NEVER be able to plan when your husband comes home on R&R or from deployment. No date you will ever be given is good." "You'll be without your household goods for at least a month when you arrive at your new duty station."

Really, ladies? Are you serious? When people say this stuff around me, especially to new ones (and it scares the crap out of them every time), I tell how Thak and I had a real wedding between his first and second deployments, how I have not done an entire pregnancy nor a birth alone since being married, we've always had concrete R&R and homecoming dates from the beginning, and how we only waited three days for our stuff when we got here. People always say we've just been lucky, and that not everyone should bank on that.

I'll admit, luck has something to do with it. We had to conceive on the first try in order to get our R&R baby, Orren. Only 20% of couples can do that. We're lucky in that.

Beyond that, though, most of it comes down to being smart. Our wedding? Well, you learn the unit's deployment rotation, and you work around it. We also knew that as soon as our wedding invites went out, our First Sergeant was going to throw a fit, attempt to try him for fraternization (although we were NOT together before I got out, contrary to the entire battalion's belief) and Thak would get orders somewhere completely random. We knew I would never return to Ft. Hood as a wife. Our First Sergeant would not have that, and he was well connected enough to get rid of situations like that. We wanted Thak to leave Ft. Hood in the first place, so we saw that as an advantage. Anyhow, we the time it takes to out-process Ft. Hood gave us enough time to have a real wedding. We timed sending our invites out with how long it would take 1SG to pull strings and bring orders down, and how long it would take to out-process Ft. Hood after that. We timed it perfectly. Three weeks prior to our wedding, the orders came for Ft. Stewart (which was a lot less random than we were expecting!). Perfect. There was NO luck in that. We knew what we were working with, and we used it to our advantage. Although I would have preferred Vegas to what we had (Thak wouldn't go for it.... boooo....), we had a real wedding, not some courthouse thing. No need to resign yourself to a courthouse wedding. Just be smart when you plan your real one.

As for the babies, there is a little luck and a little intelligence in that. If you are extremely fertile, you can absolutely time it where you will never spend a day of your pregnancy alone, and you will have your husband on hand for the birth. I didn't want to chance it in the days of less than a year between deployments, which is why we did the R&R baby thing. The luck comes in there, of course, but also a little intelligence. If you take R&R right in the middle of a 15 month deployment, even if you conceive then, you'll be alone for nearly your entire pregnancy, which is BS in my opinion, so you have to be willing to take R&R like a year in, as we did. No, that wasn't easy. Having Thak around for everything important, however? That was very nice. Also, don't be a complete idiot and try to conceive when your husband has deployment orders if you don't want to give birth alone. If you do that, then you really can't complain when it happens, nor use your experience as a way to scare other wives that it's impossible to have your husband around for your pregnancies and births. I have been doing this longer than a lot of these people, and I have gotten things my way because that is the way we have planned them. You don't have to be ok with having a baby alone in this lifestyle. I'm NOT ok with that in any way, shape, or form, and I haven't had to. Be smart.

As far as planning R&R dates, this does depend a little on circumstance, but also on being smart. My husband is a well-respected NCO, and as such, he's always had strings to pull when it comes to his R&R dates. Has he always done it in ways I consider wise? Well, no.... (During his 2nd, he came home for our anniversary, which was only 2 1/2 months in. That was stupid. During his 3rd, he learned to consult me before making these decisions.) The fact is, he has strings to pull, though, and he has used them diligently. It also can require under the table agreements that would seem very strange to civilians. When Thak and I decided to try for an R&R baby during his 3rd tour, we charted out when would PROBABLY be the best dates for him to come home and he got locked in for those dates, but as a backup, he talked with this one Lieutenant about the situation, and asked her if she would switch with him if it turned out that his dates weren't going to be right (her R&R was 2 weeks after his). She agreed to it. It didn't come to that, as Thak's original dates were good, but we had a backup plan just in case. This is the Army. Sometimes you have to do stuff like that. Be smart. Be pragmatic. Use connections if you have them. It helps if you do. Make connections if you do not have them, and gain all the rank you can before having children. People wouldn't do this for a PVT.

As for moving, again, I am seeing some level of rank issue there. I see lower-enlisted families waiting forever for their stuff, while NCO and Officer families get their stuff semi-fast to really fast. I mean, they mark your rank on the boxes. It's not inconceivable that they tend to put a rush on it when it's someone who's well established, but will put those who are not kind of to the bottom of the pile. I mean, what's a PVT going to do to you if you make him wait a month for his household goods? Call and yell at you? Yeah, ok... If they do that to a senior NCO or an Officer, they could find themselves taken off the defense contracted mover list. People would say this comes down to luck, but it really doesn't. Thak's rank has nothing to do with luck. He has seriously worked his ass off for every chevron and rocker, and has done so for 18 years. You kind of can't say there's luck in that. Was I lucky to marry him at mid-career so that I never had to play the lower-enlisted wife game? Again, not really. If I married an Active Duty soldier, I would ONLY marry an NCO. I am smart enough not to put myself in a position of having to deal with lower-enlisted garbage as a wife (I dealt with it enough when I was a lower-enlisted soldier!!) and my husband is smart enough to get promoted to a near impossible rank for his field. If you ARE a lower-enlisted wife, though, I have two words for you: DITY Move. Move your own stuff. You will NEVER have this problem again, and you'll bank a ton of money off it. Again, be smart.

I do believe there is a little luck in life. There are situations I have avoided by virtue of who Thak is, who he knows, and what he's able to do based on what he did long before we even knew each other. That does make my life a little easier. Even with that at play, though, I was smart enough to marry Thak, and WE are smart enough to see situations for what they are, and not what we wish they were, and react accordingly. This has made our lives much nicer than the average military family.