Wichita — Military policeman Pat Tetrick is off for active duty with his Army Reserve unit, leaving behind a wife awaiting arrival of their first children all four of them.
Tetrick is a sergeant first class with the Hutchinson-based 346th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit activated as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, America's battle against terrorism.
The unit's 115 members reported Thursday to Fort Riley as the first step of their mobilization. The tour of duty is scheduled to last a year, but it isn't known yet where the soldiers will be sent after the initial short stint at Fort Riley.
Tetrick, 34, of Wichita, has been a reservist for eight years after four years of active duty. He served in the Gulf War a decade ago, and later was sent to Bosnia.
His wife, Christina, 28, is 22 weeks along in her pregnancy, carrying two sets of identical twin boys.
"I call him my Boy Scout," she said. "He's very straight, very patriotic: 'You do your duty.' I support him in every way."
"What can you do?" said her husband. "I'm still part of the Army, and they did call us to active duty. I can't tell them no."
Tetrick said there's still a chance he could be in Wichita when the babies are born, but that will depend on his assignment and world events.
"Everything has to be in alignment for me to be here," he said. "If not, we both have pretty much accepted that."
Christina's official due date is in early May, but she expects to deliver sometime in March. Doctors have told her the average term for quadruplets is 29 weeks, which would be March 7.
So far, she said, the pregnancy is progressing smoothly.
Multiple births are on the rise nationally, having increased six-fold in the past 25 years in large part because of fertility drugs, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
But quads are still rare. Of the 3,941,553 babies born nationwide in 1998, for example, only 2,508 were quads.
Twins run in Christina's family, and the Tetricks, married just over six months, did not use fertility drugs.
"I understand the genetics: Two eggs dropped, and both eggs split," said Christina. "That's something that God decides is going to happen."
Still, the odds of two sets of identical twins being born naturally are so high that the Tetricks have not been able to find anything to compare it to.
"This is definitely a double bonus," Pat said. "We're really excited about it."
Even though it means they've already outgrown the two-bedroom house they bought a week before discovering Christina was carrying the quads.
Her co-workers at Eby Construction and other friends are finishing the home's basement for the family so they'll have more bedrooms.
With those friends and the rest of Pat's family nearby, Christina said she was sure she would be well cared for in her husband's absence.
"This is something that our country needs to do because of September 11 and the other problems that terrorism causes," she said. "It made it easier for him to go because it's made it important enough."
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