RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. With women officially or not now serving on the front lines, perhaps this was inevitable. A British soldier in Afghanistan has given birth to a bouncing baby boy. The new mother is a gunner at a NATO base in Helmand, which came under attack just days before Tuesday's birth. Britain's ministry of defense says the baby was conceived before the soldier deployed and that she didn't realize she was pregnant. Mother and baby are now headed home. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.