Some U.S. soldiers in Iraq won’t be coming home as soon as they thought. The army is expanding its stop-loss policy. That means deployed soldiers, whose time in the army is up, will have to stay a little longer.

The amount of time these soldiers have to stay in Iraq varies on a case by case basis. Essentially, though, they will have to remain deployed until the rest of their unit is scheduled to come home.

Soldiers overseas have family members who are anxious to see them come home quickly and safely, but the department of defense says 7,000 men and women, who are retiring or whose time is up, will be staying in Iraq. Christine Hannaly, the wife of specialist Joe Martin, expected her husband to be home in January. She says, “A few days before that, they put in a stop-loss and we found out he wasn't coming home.” He was supposed to be out of the army completely by mid-March, but now he is supposed to be home by the end of the month and out of the army by the end of Summer.

Hannaly says the stop-loss policy is a big reason why she has been on an emotional rollercoaster since her husband left. “You're just so happy.. you're looking forward to it. You can't sleep and then, all of a sudden, you just crash. You find out that they're not coming home.”

Soldiers just now being deployed are also subject to this stop-loss policy.