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They're jokingly called “tour babies” — the crop of children that seems to appear during and after military tours of duty overseas.

Agencies that support military families across Canada say they've noticed signs of a baby boom in the wake of major deployments to Afghanistan — a rising demand for infant care and swelling numbers of pregnant women joining support groups on the home bases.

“I've seen lots of new little babies in the last little while,” said Beth Corey, executive director of the Military Family Resource Centre at CFB Gagetown, N.B., home to about 4,000 soldiers.

Groups of five or six military wives, many of them pregnant, have regularly gathered for coffee over the summer to talk about their spouses' deployment to Afghanistan and to compare notes on their due dates.

“They were all about a month or two apart from each other,” Ms. Corey said an interview Tuesday.

Soldiers from Gagetown trained at CFB Wainwright in Alberta last fall for this year's Afghanistan mission, and that's when Ms. Corey began to notice a lot of pregnant women.

“We kind of joked around and called them the ‘Wainwright babies,' ”she said.

Many of the Gagetown soldiers are young, just starting their families, so that could also help account for a boom in pregnancies.

Return ceremonies, which began at Gagetown in July and just wrapped up on Saturday, routinely saw wives bringing babies born during the deployment to meet their daddies for the first time.

“There's something about that reunion stuff,” Ms. Corey said. “Absence certainly makes the heart grow fonder.”

Capt. Mark Peebles began to notice a lot of babies and young children at Edmonton Garrison when he returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan last summer.

“I've heard the term a couple of times, that so-and-so is a tour baby. It's not uncommon either before or right after a tour that families have another addition,” he said.

Capt. Peebles, 33, and his wife Kimberley, already had a seven-month-old son, Thomas, when he was sent to Afghanistan in February 2006. Less than 48 hours before he left, he found out that his wife was pregnant again.

“It gave me some trepidation, because I'm leaving her alone with a seven-month-old and she's pregnant and it's going to be that way for seven months,” he said.

He arrived home in August 2006 and his son Luke was born in October.

“The guys talk amongst each other, and sometimes family planning takes a back seat to the heat of the moment when you come home. It's not unheard of.”

Rosa Parlin, executive director of the Military Family Resource Centre at Edmonton Garrison, said the centre's nursery now has a waiting list of up to two years.

“We've never seen a wait list like that,” she said.

“We tell people as soon as they get pregnant, ‘If you're thinking of going back to work, put your name on the list.' ”

The centre's daycare can take a total of 90 kids, including 12 babies. Up until about three years ago, it would often offer unused spaces to civilian families. Not any more, said Ms. Parlin.

“Now it's straight military.”

Brad Fehr, manager of an Edmonton YMCA that serves military families, said 10 preschool classes, with about 25 kids each, are completely full. Summer day camp enrolments were up more than 30 per cent over last year and a staff shortage has left parents unable to get their kids into swimming lessons.

Officials at the Military Family Resource Centre at CFB Petawawa, Ont., couldn't be reached for comment, but one daycare worker there said she's noticed a pattern.

“Every time there's a six-month tour of duty around here, there's always babies afterwards,” said the worker, who didn't want to be named.

Department of National Defence officials in Ottawa couldn't immediately supply any hard numbers on a possible Canadian military baby boom, but there's proof that the Iraq war has caused one in the United States.

About 19,000 soldiers returned to Fort Stewart, Ga., in the first months of 2006. Nine months later the military hospital began delivering more than 100 babies a month, compared with 76 a month the previous year.

Fort Hood in Texas saw deliveries peak at 289 in March 2006, well above the 213 average.

And in Fort Campbell, Ky., the hospital is bracing to deliver 210 babies a month soon, nearly twice the usual number. The baby rush is expected to follow last fall's return of about 20,000 soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division.