A virtual delivery

OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM --Tech. Sgt. Troy Goodman did not sit by his wife's hospital bed when she gave birth to their second son. Instead, he sat more than 10,000 miles away in tent city watching the delivery via Webcam.

"I was woken up at 2 a.m., and got in touch with my wife at 3 a.m. By 4 a.m., I was logged into the Internet Protocol address and the Webcam was up and working," said Sergeant Goodman, the noncommissioned officer in charge of munitions inspections for the 40th Expeditionary Munitions Flight at a forward-deployed location.

The Goodmans first heard about the idea of a Webcam delivery from a family friend who used her contacts to reach the right people at Rapid City Regional Hospital in Rapid City, S.D. Without the Webcam, a phone call would have been the only other option.

Before his wife, Valerie, went into labor, the hospital's communications department staff coordinated with people from the 40th Expeditionary Communications Flight to work out technical aspects between the civilian hospital and the deployed location.

After hospital workers sent the IP address, each user made adjustments to their systems.

"We bad problems with audio at first, and the video was a little choppy at the beginning, but it finally smoothed out," said Tech. Sgt. Samuel Nye, the NCOIC for the flight's help desk. "I have never by Master Sgt. Sean Brennan done anything like this before for a customer."

In August, after spending eight hours in a private chat room, Sergeant Goodman took a look at his newborn son, Gavin Dean Goodman.

"When Gavin was born the doctor held him up to the camera first, and then gave him to my wife," Sergeant Goodman said.

--1st Lt. Denise Burnham 40th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs

COPYRIGHT 2004 U.S. Air Force, Air Force News Agency
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group