Enjoying a home and family, as planned
They’d moved seven times in eight years. Military life was rewarding, but it was time for stability.
THE PARENTS: Ashleen Gies, 32, and Mike Gies, 33, of Lafayette Hill
THE KIDS: Liam Michael, 6; Ashleen Marie, 5 (Beenie); Oliver Thomas, 3; Shaylynn Mae, born Aug. 8, 2020
AN ALMOST DEAL BREAKER: Ashleen’s devout Catholicism (Mike was raised a nondenominational Christian), which made her think, “This can’t work,” even before they started dating. But Mike agreed: a wedding at her family church, baptisms for all the children, and a plan to raise them in the Catholic faith.
Ashleen was giving a friend a tour of their Lafayette Hill house: Here’s where we gutted the place and put on the addition; here’s the kid space in the basement. Her friend pointed to a spot at the base of the living room stairs: “And is that the delivery room?”
The answer was a wry, proud yes: That’s where Ashleen held onto the banister post and said, “Mike, you need to catch this baby right now.” That’s where he wrapped just-born Shaylynn in a freshly laundered beach towel as the older kids came clattering up from the basement to check out all the noise.
Both knew they wanted children — Ashleen lobbied for five, while Mike thought three might be ideal — even from the time they met as classmates in Cadet Squadron 20 at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
She was an introvert, a rule-follower who was also open to adventure: rock climbing, skiiing, waterfall hikes. He was mildly mischievous, the guy who got reprimanded for skipping meals or venturing off base when he wasn’t supposed to.
They were a couple by their junior year. And the December after graduation — they were 2nd lieutenants then, at Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento — Mike gave Ashleen a bulky Christmas present that felt like a blanket.
Actually, it was a bathrobe, with a small box in one pocket. “I got all breathless: is this happening? But the box was empty. I threw it at him. Then he got down on one knee and said some really cute things,” Ashleen says.
They married in October 2011, in a snowstorm that turned their hoped-for autumn ceremony into a wintry panorama. They wanted to be stationed closer to the East Coast, where Ashleen’s family lives; instead, the Air Force sent them to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu.
Mike remembers their apartment: the yellow light in the bathroom, the day Ashleen emerged to say, “We’re pregnant.” She felt constantly nauseated — she can recall all the spots around the island where she stopped the car to vomit by the roadside — and at nearly 34 weeks, was still gaining weight rapidly.
“I remember standing in front of the mirror, thinking: You’ve jumped out of airplanes, left your family when you were 17, gone through basic training. You can handle the discomfort of pregnancy. Just suck it up and move on.”
Ashleen didn’t know she had preeclampsia. But on a visit to Philadelphia for her sister’s bridal shower, her mother urged her to get a blood pressure check. Within hours, she was at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, sobbing on the phone to Mike as she prepared for an induction.
He missed Liam’s birth by two hours. The baby remained in the NICU for 12 days, then he and Ashleen stayed in Pennsylvania for three months, until doctors thought the baby was sturdy enough for the long flight to Hawaii.
The family had four months together before Mike was deployed — to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The week before he left, Ashleen realized she was pregnant again.
“I was gone for eight months. I missed Liam’s first birthday, his first words, him crawling and walking,” Mike says. “I missed Ashleen’s belly growing.” But he was home for the birth and the blurry first months of having two children barely a year apart.
Their next stop was San Antonio, a plum job for Mike that focused on process improvement and waste reduction. Ashleen decided to leave the Air Force. “I was good at my job; it was hard to leave something I felt secure and confident with,” she says. “But I was also really excited to spend time with the kids.”
In San Antonio, they went to the zoo almost every week, brother and sister sharing a giant tub of popcorn and lemonade in a souvenir cup with a giraffe on it. But when pregnancy No. 3 left Ashleen queasy and depleted, it was harder to be a stay-at-home mom than to work with empathetic colleagues.
“Toddlers didn’t really understand why I was lying on the floor in the bathroom,” Ashleen says. “I remember counting down the minutes until Mike would get home from work.”
This time, they wrote a birth plan and made visualization boards with family photos and inspirational words. Ashleen labored at home for as long as she could, walking around their San Antonio neighborhood, stopping every few feet to breathe through a contraction. At the hospital, the whole family was in the room when Oliver arrived.
They’d moved seven times in eight years. Military life was rewarding, but it was time for stability. Mike left the Air Force, and, in summer 2018, the family moved into Ashleen’s parents’ home in Lafayette Hill while they looked for a house of their own.
They found a place, spent more than a year renovating it, and moved in. Shortly afterward, they learned they were pregnant again. This time was the most harrowing: Ashleen developed hyperemesis and couldn’t keep anything down, even water. She would drive the older kids to preschool, then bring Oliver to her sister’s house and fall asleep on the floor.
When her contractions began, she thought about her earlier labors — 12 hours with Ashleen, 20 hours with Oliver — and figured she had plenty of time. But then her water broke, the contractions were ferocious and fast, and she felt an urge to push.
Minutes later, Ashleen recalls, “I was slumped at the bottom of the stairs with my back against the wall, completely in shock, and Mike laid Shaylynn on my belly.”
The take-home for Mike — perhaps a life lesson, he says — is the disjuncture between intention and what actually occurs. “This birth, even though it wasn’t planned, was one of the coolest things we’ve ever done. It was natural. Instinctual. Ashleen’s body knew what to do. It happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen.”