The Beginning

(RaisingX.com)

How it started

If how things begin is any indication of how they will unfold, then we are probably in for an interesting adventure. Now, I guess we all know how this happened, but when we actually found out we were sitting in a hotel room in Costa Rica. Pretty fluent in Spanish, I read the Costa Rican version of Clear Blue hoping that my Spanish was rustier than I thought. It turns out my education money was well spent, I was reading it correctly; we were going to be parents. Angela was a month past 23 and working on her degree and Chaz, 25, was a year into his career out of grad school. Both of us had big dreams and felt we were just starting to scratch the surface.

We talked about kids before but never came to any definite decisions. She definitely wanted children and he wasn’t sure how that would fit into ‘the plan’. The discussion about kids was always an emotional one. We always came back to what we envisioned for our lives and how kids would impact that. So as we stared at the ‘easy to read display’ informing us our lives were about to change we each started to think what this meant for me, her/him and us. Our thoughts were random and fast: What about the pina collates, Dos XX, and margaritas from last night? How will she finish school out and have a baby? Can he still aggressively build his career? What about starting our business? Are we ready to be parents, we’re still young? Ironically, he was the calm one, but his time came as well.

Rounding out the remaining days of our vacation we talked, thought, wished, and talked some more. Being in a foreign country and completely out of normal routine helped it to remain somewhat unreal. Coming back home brought with it a new reality. We started to think about all the ‘things’ we needed to figure out, knowing there had to be many of them but not really knowing what they were. There was a lot of reading, even more internet surfing, and frequent conversations with friends and family. We went through volumes of information some good some bad. And, once we had Xavier we realized much of this adventure is experimentation and trail by fire.

In the sleep deprived chaos that is life with a new baby, we continued to read and search through articles and books. We began to realize there wasn’t much accessible information and advice we really connected with. Much of the information felt dated, and wasn’t congruent with our ideology. We were left searching for parenting, child development, product reviews and other advice that was in line with who we were and who we hope Xavier will become.

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