I want this to be click-bait and nothing more, but truth is often stranger than fiction.
My wife is not a Ranger, so I'm not going to try to equate her duties in any way, but she attended every Reserve drill weekend and training event while pregnant, right up to within a week of her due date. Second time around, there were two other expecting mothers in her unit. Our son was still nursing when she went out of state for a three-week NCO course, so she was pumping. Now, as a reservist, she is just doing what needs to be done to keep her skills fresh and what not, but as far as Uncle Sam is concerned, drill and training are active duty.
Obviously, lots of women in the civilian world work while pregnant, but lots of women aren't in the military, and definitely aren't Army Rangers. Yet, this is the world we find ourselves living in . . .
As a side note, while Mrs. Zone was pregnant, the VA/Tricare paid for her doctor visits. They paid for both deliveries (with C-sections) and, as you can imagine, have to have someone (or several someones) on staff to coordinate those sorts of things. Well, the latest word is that our gargantuan VA hospital here is going to bring all that stuff in-house, up to and including a maternity ward. And while I am satisfied with how things were handled from the perspective of a father and a husband, I absolutely don't think the VA should have anything to do with delivering babies based on how inept they are (as is the government in many other regards) at dealing with the legitimate medical needs of veterans. Truly, I felt dirty knowing taxpayers were covering the cost of my kids being born.
