Female soldiers 'should take pregnancy tests before war zone deployment' The complicated birth is understood to have been traumatic and the specialist medical team, including a midwife and experts in premature babies, have taken an incubator due to the boy's condition. The Army medics at the £10 million field hospital, who are world leaders in treating injuries from bomb blasts and gun wounds, do not have specialist midwifery skills. The birth occurred just a few days after the camp, where the majority of Britain's 9,500 soldiers, including Prince Harry, are deployed, was attacked by Taliban insurgents who destroyed six aircraft and killed two US Marines. British military officials in Afghanistan were today tight-lipped on the identity of the mother or the name of her son as they stayed inside the sprawling Helmand camp. "They might name him Sebastian," one defence source told The Daily Telegraph. The Ministry of Defence insisted that senior officers were not aware of her condition and stressed that pregnant servicewomen were not allowed to be deployed on operations. Experts said that so-called denied, or undetected, pregnancies are thought to be rare. While it is the first time a British soldier has given birth in a combat zone field hospital, official figures showed that dozens of servicewomen have been forced to return from the front line because they had conceived. Military experts called for an overhaul of testing of female soldiers who were being sent to the front line to include more rigorous checks including a simple urine test for pregnancy. "This sort of thing makes life difficult for everyone else but the important thing is the welfare of the female soldier," said Maj Charles Heyman, a retired soldier and leading author on the British Army. This could have gone wrong and we don't know if the attack on Camp Bastion might have forced the birth. It's maybe that the excitement of the tour masked the symptoms of the pregnancy but I know it's not a good thing for a woman or the baby to be born there. Defence sources insisted officials did not "test" for pregnancy, arguing it was unlikely a female servicewoman would knowingly "volunteer" for deployment on "active operations" while pregnant. After the news leaked out yesterday, officials declined repeated requests for details about the gunner, who had been deployed with the 12th Mechanised Brigade since March, including her age, marital status or where she was born. We're not giving any more information out. Mother and baby are both in a stable condition," said one officer. Sources said she remained overwhelmed by the interest in her case and wished to remain anonymous in order to care for her child. It is thought the baby will be registered in Britain because it was born on "British soil." According to figures released by the MoD, up to 200 female soldiers have been "aero medically evacuated" from war zones including Afghanistan and Iraq because of pregnancy over the past five years. Last year one unnamed female British soldier gave birth two weeks after returning from her six-month deployment to Afghanistan. The MoD argued that fewer than one per cent of servicewoman returned home due to pregnancy. A MoD spokesman declined to comment.