Soldier will meet daughter on Christmas Eve

You would never guess this couple's thrilling plans for Christmas Eve if you had witnessed the start of the romance between Matt Vega and Stephanie Knutson during their sophomore year at Glenbard North High School.

“We went to Ruby Tuesday and probably didn't say more than two words to each other,” remembers Stephanie, who grew up in Carol Stream just a couple of blocks from Matt. “He was quiet.”

The silence continued throughout a summer of unusual dates.

“If I ordered mozzarella sticks, he ordered mozzarella sticks. If I got a Coke, he got a Coke,” Stephanie says. “He wanted to make me feel comfortable, but it just made me feel weird.”

They eventually found their groove, and then some.

Matt, fresh off his third tour of Iraq, will fly into O'Hare on Christmas Eve to reunite with Stephanie and hold their newborn daughter — Leah Elizabeth Vega — for the first time in what will be his best Christmas present ever.

“I got a PlayStation when I was little, but it's nothing like this,” says a giddy Matt, speaking by telephone from his home base in El Paso, Texas, as he anticipates seeing the daughter he's known only through long-distance digital images.

When Stephanie gave birth on Nov. 14, two weeks before her due date, Matt watched through a shaky laptop connection from his military housing in southern Iraq.

“I literally stayed up all night to watch,” remembers Matt, who hunkered down before the glow from his laptop as his roommate dozed on the neighboring bunk.

“(The roommate) was sleeping so we had to whisper,” says Stephanie.

But in the midst of her labor at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, doctors determined she needed an emergency C-section. They turned the Skype video connection off during surgery, but turned it back on minutes after Leah was born and mother and child were in recovery.

“Matt started crying. He started bawling. And I was just so happy, on top of the world, that he got to see her,” Stephanie says.

“When they put the screen back on and Leah was up there, it was the greatest feeling in the world,” says Matt, who didn't get the chance to pass out cigars or even sit in an easy chair and soak it all in.

A few hours later, the new dad, armed with his M4 carbine battle rifle, was patrolling the streets on a peacekeeping mission.

“The missions come before everything,” the soldier says, adding that his fatherhood status didn't change his approach to his job or his commitment to his fellow soldiers. “These guys are my brothers, and I will willingly jump in front of a bullet for any of them.”

Stephanie says she worried all the time about Matt during his first two tours in the war-torn nation where 4,500 American soldiers were killed. But she felt calmer when he returned to Iraq in August and left his pregnant wife on her own.

“I just had a feeling everything was going to be OK,” Stephanie says. “I knew he had to get home to see her.”

The high school sweethearts (he was the quarterback on the football team and she was a captain of the poms squad) got married on the day after Valentine's Day in 2008, when she left her studies at Illinois State University to join Matt in Texas at the appropriately named Fort Bliss. Stephanie transferred to the University of Texas at El Paso and graduated last May with her degree as a special-education teacher.

The couple always wanted children and were looking into adoption because Stephanie was told at age 16 that her oddly shaped uterus likely would make her miscarry or prevent her from getting pregnant.

“So she's like a total miracle that she even made it to 38 weeks,” Stephanie says as she feeds the baby who was born with the umbilical cord wrapped twice around her neck. The healthy Leah has gained a couple of pounds from her birth weight of 5 pounds, 4 ounces.

Matt was training in California in April when Stephanie found out they were expecting.

“I didn't get to talk to him all month, and the morning I find out I'm pregnant, I get to talk to him within five minutes,” Stephanie says. “I finally do get pregnant and I want him to be with me every minute, and he had to leave for Iraq.”

They picked out the name and registered for a baby shower before he deployed, but he missed those fun doctor visits with ultrasound photographs.

“I was able to take a picture of the picture I got and email it to him, but it's not the same,” Stephanie says.

The couple bought a house in El Paso. But, thinking her husband wouldn't be back from Iraq until spring, Stephanie moved back in with her parents, Tom and Becky Knutson, in Carol Stream, for the duration of her high-risk pregnancy. The Knutson family and Matt's 19-year-old sister, Tiffany, will be among the loved ones at O'Hare to welcome the new dad.

“This is the best Christmas present in the world,” says Stephanie, who bought the plane ticket from Texas to Illinois as soon as she realized the troop withdrawal really was going to happen and Matt would be home by Christmas instead of closer to Memorial Day.

As tough as it was to be Iraq while his daughter was born, it's “probably the hardest knowing that she's sitting in Carol Stream and I'm home (in Texas) and can't see her yet,” says Matt. The new mom knows what to expect from her husband.

“My entire first week I did nothing but hold her and look at her,” Stephanie says. “He probably won't even talk. It will be like our first date all over again.”