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Daughter's early arrival brings dad from battlefield

By JAY HAMBURG
Staff Writer
The Nashville Tennessean
Tennessean.com
Wednesday, 11/19/03

Soldier gets brief visit to bond with his feisty premature baby

The 6-foot-2 soldier, who recently returned from patrolling the dusty, sometimes dangerous villages in northern Iraq, reached into the clear, clean incubator on the intensive-care ward in Vanderbilt Children's Hospital and gently lifted the squirming little reason he came home in a hurry.

JAE S. LEE / STAFF   Hannah Christine Alderin, born four months early, looks up at her father, Sgt. Erik Alderin of the 101st Airborne Division, as she holds one of her mother's fingers in Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.

There in his hands was 14-inch, 2-pound Hannah, who arrived four months premature at the post hospital at Fort Campbell and quickly got her first transfer orders to Nashville for special high-tech care.

Cradling the baby in his arms for the few minutes that she was allowed outside the temperature-controlled, clear plastic box, the young father wrapped a blanket around his daughter and whispered, ''Hi, sweetheart.''

Hannah reached up with her premature hand, barely large enough to wrap around the end of her father's index finger, and there they were: infant and infantryman, forming one of the bonds that make danger in a faraway desert worthwhile to her dad.

Army Sgt. Erik Alderin, 22, will head back to the ongoing conflict in Iraq on Saturday — duties with the 101st Airborne Division that he doesn't talk too much about, except to say that it ultimately helps keep his own family safe. These days he focuses on his wife, Tanya, and their first child, squeezing in as much family time as he can before returning to a place still rife with danger.

Hannah, born four months early, will have a bit of a fight on her hands, too — one that the nurses feel confident she'll win. ''They're already little fighters, just to be here,'' said nurse Annette Hefner, gesturing toward the 57 other preemies who are growing stronger in the neonatal intensive-care unit.

Tanya can already tell that her daughter is getting healthier and more rambunctious after a couple of weeks in the hospital. Hannah is breathing on her own now and will kick out her leg, if lightly tickled.

''She's funny,'' said Tanya, 21, who is not the least shaken by the premature birth in Blanchfield Army Community Hospital in Fort Campbell, even though she had only been in the area since late July, when her husband was transferred from Alaska.

Tanya's father was in the military, and she was used to her husband being away on various military duties. But when Erik left with his 6th Battalion Pathfinder group in early September, she had every reason to believe he'd be back in time for the birth in February.

When things rushed ahead of schedule, a neighbor whose husband also had been sent overseas came to the hospital to be with Tanya. The baby arrived Oct. 28, and word got passed along to Iraq, where Erik was informed while on guard duty at 4 a.m. outside of Mosul in northern Iraq. Excited and worried, he got permission to use a phone and eventually reached Tanya, who told him that the baby was OK at Vanderbilt. But Erik, who had only been at Fort Campbell for a month before shipping out, asked his wife: ''Where's Vanderbilt?''

After securing emergency leave, he hopscotched to Baghdad, catching rides on Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters. He then took a military cargo plane to Kuwait. There, he caught a civilian airline that eventually brought him to Nashville.

Nearing the end of his three-week emergency leave, Erik said he will be thinking about his wife of two years and their baby when he heads back to his unit in Iraq on Saturday. He expects to be on more Humvee patrols, keeping a strong American presence and seeing what various villages need for supplies. He said he'll be thinking of Tanya driving in daily from their apartment in Clarksville to see Hannah in Nashville. Their daughter is expected to be in the hospital until February, just about the time he's due back.

Erik has enjoyed getting to hold his child, but he doesn't talk very easily about it. Asked what the tiny baby in his arms felt like, he paused and said, ''Light.''

Later, he added a couple of other words. ''Good. Wonderful. I don't know how to say it. I've held a lot of kids in my time, but this one is mine.'' 

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