In the past few weeks, Sterling and I have once again been reminded that our privilege has held us blind to a system that is oppressive, prejudice, and racist. We keep coming back to each other asking ourselves what can we do. As we attempt to educate ourselves and address our ignorance, we talk a lot about ways that we can both be more of an ally. As we look deeply into our own responsibility as white people, we also have been evaluating our responsibility as future parents who are bringing another person of privilege into this world.

As we bring this new life into the world we know we have a strong responsibility.

A responsibility to protect this life and keep it safe and healthy but just as important, to teach our child to be a truly compassionate person.  Someone who listens to people’s stories and who fights to stand up with others and what’s right. We want to raise this child to recognize injustice and not sit back as a silent bystander.  Someone who stands up against bullies, whether that be an individual picking on someone in the hallway or a system designed to oppress.  We as future parents know that we have to teach ourselves how to do this in our own hearts and then work every day to teach our children.  Raising Baby Travis to be a person that others can lean on, trust, and talk to means being parents that demonstrate this every day as an example.  By sharing this part of our baby’s journey with you, we hope to invite you in to help us and hold us accountable on this goal.  They say it takes a village to raise children and we hope you’ll be a part of ours.

16 weeks ago we were debating whether we were going to find out the sex of this baby which was back in February!!  This feels like FOREVER ago, especially now that we are 31 weeks pregnant!   Fast forward to March and we had our anatomy scan and each of swore that we knew FOR SURE what the sex of the baby was.  I SWORE it was a boy and Sterling SWORE it was a girl. We left the doctor’s office with a very unassuming envelope that contained the big reveal of our baby’s sex.  But the question still remained – should we, would we open the envelope and find out!!?

Sterling wasn’t sure he wanted to find out and I was sure I did but we couldn’t come to an agreement so we procrastinated… for just a mere 24(ish) hours.  :).

After we opened the envelope and found out the sex, we decided to keep it a secret between just us two for a while.  Which honestly, was SO special.  It felt really intimate that only the three of us knew this little secret.  It made it feel really real and also like the beginning stages of the three of us as our own little family.

Our next debate was whether we’d tell our families.  Once we decided to share the secret intimately with family we got another fun treat of planning how we wanted to do it!  COVID-19 added a layer of difficulty as we couldn’t travel to tell people and we couldn’t have people visit us for one big joint reveal.  So in April (nearly a month after finding out), we decided to send off a box to each family that included poppers and let the grandparents POP the news!  I honestly had more fun planning this surprise and watching them reveal the sex than opening the envelope ourselves.  :). We had a joint zoom call with Sterling’s immediate family, took votes, and videotaped the whole experience so we’d always have the memory. Then later that day, we drove to my parents’ house and very cautiously stood extremely far apart with masks and had them pop their poppers!  The only weird part about the whole experience was not being able to hug anyone who found out on either side of the family but it was still really amazing and special.

So fast forward to now, almost three months later after finding out and we are ready to share with all our closest friends and extended families!  I’ll be honest, once we shared the news with our immediate families, and started to refer to the baby as ________ (pronoun) it became harder and harder to not slip said pronoun out in mixed company.  I can’t say that I’ve been perfect at it either and have made some serious slip-ups, multiple times in fact.  Which has led to a few people here and there piecing it together and coming to the realization that Baby Travis is a…..