Desert Storm May Father Baby Boom in S.D. County : Military: A 17% increase in pregnancies is reported by doctors at Camp Pendleton since the Gulf War.

Almost nine months after the privations of Operation Desert Storm, many of the 30,000 Marines and sailors who went to war from Camp Pendleton are making up for lost time and starting an apparent baby boom.

The first war babies will arrive in December. Early signs indicate there’s a 17% increase in military family pregnancies over the preceding two years, and the rate is expected to climb.

“Everybody’s gut feeling is we’ve got a baby boom,” said Navy Capt. William Rowley, commanding officer of the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton.

Two people who don’t need persuading are Lance Cpl. Michael Labit, 21, and his 19-year-old wife, Elizabeth, who met and fell in love through an exchange of letters while the amphibious assault vehicle crewman spent three months in the war zone.

Marriage and children weren’t in the San Diego native’s plans, but when he came home April 8, he discovered the experience of war had changed his mind.

“I didn’t expect to get married at all, but you tend to realize how important things are,” Labit said.

He and Elizabeth married in July, moved into a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Oceanside, and learned last month that they will be parents in June.

“We’ve only been married four months,” the mother-to-be said. “We are just getting started. We weren’t talking about having a child so soon.”

“It wasn’t planned, it was just oops,” she said.

She’s quit her waitress job, the couple intends to find a bigger apartment when the baby comes, and Labit is thinking of leaving the Marine Corps when his enlistment ends in 2 1/2 years because he doesn’t want to be separated from his family by a deployment.

“I really don’t like to be overseas that long, especially with her taking care of the baby by herself,” he said. But, despite the sudden reality of unexpected fatherhood, “I’m really thrilled, I can’t wait till it happens.”

How many other Camp Pendleton couples face similar decisions isn’t known because statistics about the pending baby glut are still sketchy.

But military medical officials, relying on anecdotal information and some preliminary numbers, are concluding that there’s a clear trend toward higher-than-normal birth numbers.

Navy hospital lab results from September and October show 162 women had positive pregnancy tests, a 17.4% increase over the same two-month period in 1990 and a slightly greater jump over those two months in 1989.

“I think that’s significant,” said Cmdr. Ismael Lopez, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the base hospital.

Lopez believes that the increase in pregnancies has been constant since most Marines and sailors returned to base in March and April, but he cautioned that it might take a year before actual births reveal whether this is a full-fledged baby boom.

However, medical officials presume the 17% increase might be even higher because civilian hospitals in North County are also handling some overflow military pregnancies.

Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside reports a sharp rise in the number of cases referred by the base under the Civilian Health and Medical Program for the Uniformed Services (CHAMPUS), which provides off-base medical service for military dependents.

“We expect that trend to continue for a while,” hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Velez said.

According to the base hospital, in October alone 318 pregnancy cases were referred to community hospitals.

“It’s the largest number we’ve ever seen,” Rowley said, “it’s double almost every other month.”

Although the referrals do help illustrate the increased military pregnancies, base hospital officials say the number is far from being a totally reliable indicator.

That’s because the hospital is referring more cases to outside hospitals, partly in anticipation of five staff gynecologists, including Lopez, leaving the Navy in mid 1992.

“At this point, I still don’t know when the replacements are coming,” Lopez said. “There’s no way I was going to commit to take care of these patients without knowing there would be enough physicians here.”

He’s confident, though, that, between the base hospital and civilian medical facilities, “everybody’s being taken care of. I don’t think there’ll be a shortage of prenatal care.”

Signals of a baby boom at Camp Pendleton come a few months after base legal officers and counselors were busily handling a huge summer increase in Marine divorces stemming from wartime separations.

There are mixed reports from other military installations.

Pat Kelly, spokeswoman for the Naval Hospital in Balboa Park, said that facility is detecting no signs of a heightened birth rate. “Our monthly figures generally remain constant,” she said.

Similarly, Camp Lejeune, Camp Pendleton’s counterpart in North Carolina, isn’t seeing any fluctuation. “As far as a substantial increase from the norm, no, there isn’t one,” said Staff Sgt. Sylvia Gethicker, a Camp Lejeune spokeswoman.

As more time passes, she said there’s “a darn good possibility” of increased pregnancies being evident.

Much of the discussion in military circles about postwar babies began with the Army’s Ft. Bragg, where a spokesman, Sgt. 1st Class Skip Richey, said that “certainly there’s a lot more babies than we normally have.”

However, Richey doesn’t regard it as a baby boom, but just the predictable rise in pregnancies that follows the return of troops from overseas.

“We don’t consider it extraordinary after a deployment,” he said.