American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U. S. Military History

G
IVING 
B
IRTH
A
few days before we were scheduled to deploy, I went to the
doctor to see about getting a cyst in my neck removed. Inside his
examining room, he numbed the area around it with a local
anesthesia, then they stuck a needle in my neck to suction the
material out.
I think. I don’t actually know, because as soon as the needle
went in, I passed out with a seizure. When I came to, I was out flat
on the examining table, my feet where my head should have been.
I had no other ill effects, not from the seizure or the procedure.
No one really could figure out why I’d reacted the way I did. As far
as anyone could tell, I was fine.
But there was a problem—a seizure is grounds for being
medically discharged from the Navy. Luckily, there was a corpsman
whom I’d served with in the room. He persuaded the doctor not to
include the seizure in his report, or to write what happened in a way
that wouldn’t affect my deployment or my career. (I’m not sure
which.) I never heard anything about it again.
B
ut what the seizure 
did
do was keep me from getting to Taya.
While I’d been passing out, she had been having a routine

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pregnancy checkup. It was about three weeks before our daughter
was due and days before I was supposed to deploy. The checkup
included an ultrasound, and when the technician looked away from
the screen, my wife realized something was wrong.
“I have a feeling you’re having this baby right away,” was the
most the technician would say before getting up and fetching the
doctor.
The baby had her umbilical cord around her neck. She was also
breached and the amount of amniotic fluid—liquid that nourishes
and protects the developing infant—was low.
“We’ll do a C-section,” said the doc. “Don’t worry. We’ll get
this baby out tomorrow. You’ll be fine.”
Taya had called me several times. By the time I came to, she
was already at the hospital.
We spent a nervous night together. The next morning, the
doctors performed a C-section. As they were working, they hit
some kind of artery and splashed blood all over the place. I was
deathly afraid for my wife. I felt real fear. Worse.
M
aybe it was a touch of what she’d gone through every moment of
my deployment. It was a terrible hopelessness and despair.
A hard thing to admit, let alone stomach.
O
ur daughter was fine. I took her and held her. I’d been as distant
toward her as I had been toward our son before he was born; now,

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holding her, I started to feel real warmth and love.
Taya looked at me strangely when I tried to hand her the baby.
“Don’t you want to hold her?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
God,
I thought, 
she’s rejecting our daughter. I have to leave
and she’s not even bonding.
A few moments later, Taya reached out and took her.
Thank God.
Two days later, I deployed.

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