Combining a Family with Skydiving 

Inka Cagnasso shares her personal experiences as a family of two professional skydivers with a toddler in tow. How it’s been so far, what they learned, and what they wished they had known beforehand…

Meet the Cagnassos – we are a family of two professional skydivers – Claudio and Inka – and a two-year-old; Camila. Before we became a family of three, my and Claudio’s life was spent on the road for a big part of the year. We would work in skydiving events and run tunnel camps around the world, sometimes changing countries or even continents once a week or so, for months in a row. Our home base was and still is in DeLand, Florida – we live in a self-built tiny house and absolutely love it.

It’s not the easiest lifestyle to bring a child into, and obviously we were aware of that even before I got pregnant with Camila. But we were also facing something unknown, so it was impossible to say what things needed to change, and how much. Would we be able to keep jumping? What about traveling? We decided we would just take it one day at a time, and solve problems and challenges as we would face them instead of worrying about it too much ahead. 

As my pregnancy started showing I realized we are not alone with these questions. I was approached by so many couples, as they were in that place in their lives that they wanted to have a family but were not sure if they were ready to give up on skydiving. Therefore, I wanna share our experience – how it’s been, what we have learned, and what I wish we had known beforehand…

I could probably write a whole another article about the pregnancy side of things, but long story short – I had a great pregnancy with Camila. I flew in the tunnel and kept skydiving until I was around 20 weeks pregnant, I just put a lot of focus on managing the risks of both sports. We also traveled a lot with Claudio’s work and I really did not mind watching other people jumping and staying on the ground. I loved being pregnant, so it felt easy to just be present in it and enjoy the time immersed in growing a human being. I was back in the tunnel two weeks after Camila was born and skydiving around six weeks after. Physically I felt like getting back into the sports I love was very easy. 

Long before Camila was born, I had seen this quote:

 “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents”

I might nowadays be a mom before anything else, but I firmly believe that it is a good thing for a child to grow up with parents who do things they are passionate about, live a life that makes them content and fulfilled, and remain true to themselves, aside from just being moms and dads now. Being a parent is a wonderful adventure of its own, but I wanna be the best version of myself in other ways too than just being a good mom. I also wanna set an example for her – how can we expect her to chase her passions when she grows up if we give up on our own? So, I resumed living life as ‘normally’ as possible after Camila was born. We both continued working with skydiving and tunnel flying. To be honest, we for sure fun jump a little bit less than we used to, but I try to focus on the quality of the jumps instead.

We were very quickly reminded of the dangers of our sport. I’d like to think we are both smart skydivers who do not take pointless risks and are aware of their limits. Yet, sometimes accidents happen. Camila was two months old when Claudio had a Cypres fire during his landing and broke his hips. Three months on crutches definitely added some challenges to our life with a baby, but we made it work. It’s important to acknowledge this side of things though – you could get hurt, or worse. I definitely assess my skydiving differently now, even though I have always been a quite conservative skydiver. I don’t work for events or event organizers that push the coaches to go and jump in sketchy conditions. I respect my personal limits and trust my intuition even more than I used to.

There are three main challenges I feel like I have faced as an internationally traveling skydiving mom…

The first challenge is time management – this does not come as a surprise to anyone. Not only are Claudio and I both skydivers, but we are a part of the same team which means that we work in a lot of events together, and team train together. The time management is getting easier now that Camila is two and is going to school. But, we have definitely had to take a lot of turns and just accept that we can both keep skydiving but very often it’s at different times. We’ve used babysitters and had our friends and Camila’s grandma to help on some occasions to also do things together.

I wish that before Camila was born someone would have told me a million times over – everything will pass. Time really flies with a kid – everything is a stage, and things change really quickly. Don’t get frustrated – you’ll be done with this challenge before you even notice. She will always need us, but as she grows and gets more independent, that will give us a different kind of a space for our own things too.

Secondly, how are we gonna manage to make it financially sustainable to do what we are doing? This takes a lot more planning. When it was just the two of us, we were very used to going on our own trips and spending a bunch of time apart. It does not feel so natural anymore and we all prefer to travel with the whole family as much as possible. So we just try to plan our work in a way that it makes sense to purchase everyone’s tickets for each trip. We still do solo trips to work too, but less, and we both have said no to some events because it complicates life as a family, but I never felt like I was missing out. I just genuinely did not want to go, and preferred to do something that Claudio and Camila could also be a part of. We are emphasizing a good home base set up both in DeLand and our second home Caracas in Venezuela, so that we can be financially stable from the everyday life work and choose the work trips with less financial pressure.

The third – mom guilt. And I am not saying that dads are not going through these things, but the mother-child attachment especially during the baby year is intense. I was also breastfeeding for exactly a year, so all in all it was very difficult for me to take time for myself, when I knew I was needed by my beloved daughter. It was a lot harder to be present in things such as our team training, no matter how much I wanted to do it. This has changed as Camila grows. I am able to be apart from her for longer periods of time without constantly just thinking of her. 

Something that has changed is the nature of our traveling. We try to structure our trips differently and spend longer times in each location when possible, and not bounce around between different time zones like crazy so we do not constantly have to deal with jet lag. With a kid in tow, you can forget traveling lightly, but that’s not a problem if you have a good system with the bags you use. We are a bit more picky with the comfort of our travels – longer trips are broken down by layovers with a good night’s sleep in a hotel and we have different requirements for our accommodation than we used to.

With a kid in tow, you can forget traveling lightly

Some of our trips could still sound crazy and stressful to some parents who do not travel as much as we do, but it is important to remember that our daughter did her first overseas trip at one month old and has been on the road ever since. She adapts easily and does not fuss much about the change of scenery. She is not only used to this lifestyle – it’s all she knows.

So, what about the pros? Even though combining our lifestyle and family life might be challenging in ways, I feel like we are lucky to have such a flexible way to make a living. We can work more when it’s easily accessible and take time off when it makes sense the most. A normal DZ day might be long, but we also have tons of days off and on average I feel like we get to spend so much more time as a family than we would with 9 to 5 jobs. And even during our working days Camilla is often with us, hanging out at the DZ with the other dropzone kids and all the uncles and aunties – it is a blessing to get to share this with her. 

Our daughter is two and she has been to 15 different countries – many of them several times. She speaks three languages and easily adapts to everyday life in different cultures. She has friends all around the world. It is the kind of a school of life every kid does not get to experience! 

We are all very resilient and adaptable – and have grown to be even more so, as it’s the only way to make this work. For me, seeing us do life in all these different places also reminds me constantly of something super important – no matter where, it is all gonna be okay, as long as we have each other. Becoming a parent is a very profound, amazing experience that changes your priorities. Having Camila in our lives has made us focus more on the things that really matter in the long run; family, friends, health, happiness, safety.

All this being said, it is also possible that when kids enter your life, skydiving ends up in the background. But I believe this will be by choice, not because it’s impossible to combine those two things. And guess what? If that happens, I bet you are not gonna regret it.