It is impossible to walk through the produce sections of the commissaries on base without seeing bellies or newborns in car seats. “Overseas, our soldiers concentrate on their mission,” said Tom McCollum, the public affairs officer for Fort Bragg, which occupies the north and west sides of Fayetteville. “But they can’t wait to get back home.”

At Dads 101, a class for new and soon-to-be fathers that helps ease the transition from soldier to caretaker, attendance has doubled. Maternity-size Army combat uniforms in the digitized, sand-patterned camouflage used in Iraq and Afghanistan are on backorder at the base clothing sales store. And in anticipation of growing demand for home visits and other family services, the base’s New Parents Support Program has increased its staff from 5 to 19.

Baby furniture is selling so quickly at the Target on Skibo Road, a few miles southeast of the base, that pregnant women are despairing when they cannot find matching cribs, dressers and changing tables. “They’ll be, like, ‘I just called and y’all said you had it,’ " said Tyneisha McRae, a clerk working the night shift, when the infant department gets restocked. The store opens at 8 a.m., she said, “and most of the time, we’re sold out by 8:30 or 9.”

Lisa Olivares, a manager at CCE Headgear Plus, a kiosk at the mall that offers custom embroidery, has been inundated with requests to stitch unit crests and nicknames onto baby onesies, polka-dot bonnets and camouflage diaper bags. “It’s all I do,” she said.

Soldiers have noticed the boom among their ranks. “Four females in my unit have had babies,” said Staff Sgt. Bill McSwain, as he held his own new daughter, Gabrielle, in his lap in the waiting room of the Ob-Gyn clinic at Womack.

Doctors, nurses and midwives at the clinic were among the first to feel the impact of the surge, as demand for prenatal appointments began to overwhelm the staff members at the beginning of the summer. As women poured in to the facility, which now has pastel streamers with hearts dangling from its windows, the medicine cabinets began running low on progesterone, used to treat early labor.

With only 11 beds, Womack’s labor and delivery unit quickly filled up and administrators capped the patient load at 260 deliveries a month  but soon exceeded that number. Nearly 300 babies were born in August, and 261 in September.