CityView Magazine

Right | Everywhere she went, Joanne Chavonne kept noticing pregnant women. In just four months, she and other organizers planned the “world’s largest baby shower.” Dozens of churches, businesses and individuals contributed everything from baby blankets to a brand-new car. Far right | One thousand cupcakes awaited 1,000 new and expecting mothers at the Crown Expo Center. Below | Melissa Sanchez drove away from the shower in a new Chevy Malibu. A few good men And women, too. It took dozens of volunteers and countless gifts to pull off the “world’s largest baby shower.” All told, this community gave $262,000 worth of products, services and in- kind donations. Here are just a few: 125 car seats 125 Boppy pillows 1,000 baby blankets 1,000 baby wipe holders 1,000 cupcakes previous year. Two lactation counselors were added at the hospital just to help all the new moms learn to breastfeed. In November, Fayetteville Cares and Operation Homefront partnered to host a huge baby shower for 1,000 of the new military moms. Boots & Booties was billed as the largest military baby shower ever. People in the community and national manufacturers donated gifts, including a new car, for the military moms. Military baby booms are nothing new; an entire generation got its name when World War II soldiers came home and started their families. Some modern military families even brag about spacing children a deployment apart. But what makes Fayetteville’s current baby boom exceptional is the record- 46|February/March • 2009 setting month of August when nearly 300 babies were born at Womack. It’s no coincidence that August falls about nine months after the first troops from the “surge” force in Iraq began arriving back at Fort Bragg. It means that what we’re experiencing now is not so much a baby “boom” as it is a baby “surge.” Lynch says that Womack currently averages nine births per day. With only 11 labor and delivery beds available, all it takes are a couple of slowpokes and some pregnant women may find themselves laboring in the triage unit or elsewhere. Col. Flavia Diaz-Hays is the chief of Womack’s maternal health department and a certified nurse midwife. She said the increase in births has forced the hospital to “get creative” in utilizing

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