Mrs.

April showers bring May flowers--and babies! I'm 34weeks now, so only 6 more weeks to go in theory. I secretly hope for a little Taurus babe, though I feel it wrong to try to sway anything in a certain direction. So we'll see! That'll be the way of it if she comes early.

March brought a lot of action and change. In the final days of February we were able to move into our new place, which we adore. I left on leap year day to the Illinois Vipassana Center for a 10-day meditation sit in Pecatonica, Illiniois. This was a much needed retreat from the huge hustle and bustle of daily life, which had felt like a continual grasp for grounding. For 10 days, I was more or less in complete silence, took naps, meditated of course, and didn't have to cook or clean. Ahhh it was great! Then back to reality. I returned March 11th and continued nesting into our new place and prepared for house guests.

My sister Kristen and her husband Dave had plans to come into town for business, and so Justin and I decided to go ahead and rather secretly wed. Yep, you read that right. This was something we had been talking about doing, and the idea of planning a big wedding for my huge families and so many friends who I'd want to include was more than daunting. Ideally, we would have had a barnyard party on the fall solstice with live music, a puppet show, dancing, a feast of local food, and our closest 400 friends and family members :) But who has the time to plan (or pay) for that?! Soooo our friend Kristin became a minister online. Justin's mom and aunt drove up from Texas. My parents and bro came from Des Moines for the afternoon. And basically right after Justin got off work on a Tuesday afternoon, we walked through Oakland Cemetary to Hickory Hills Park, climbed up on a rock, and said our vows. We then walked back to our house, ate some chocolate cake, the ladies casted my belly in plaster while the men turned in the marriage license to the county recorder's office and had a beer, and then we went for dinner.

So we three are now the Cornett-Olssons :)

And so now, I am continuing to nest and get our home ready. I am still doing some low-key midwifery work, mostly chart work and organizing for the midwives with whom I will be working full-time starting in July/August. I hope to attend a couple births as well before Cricket comes in May. Justin is starting to work a ton now as the farm work is picking up and he just got his bees hived. He's working 30hrs a week at the Montessori school still and then going up to Salt Fork farms in Solon in the afternoons/evenings, where he's starting planting and caring for little chicks, and of course keeping his bees, which we are both so excited for! When the school closes for the summer he'll be working full-time on the farm.

Well that's enough excitement for now! Love! Rachel and Cricket Cornett-Olsson

ceremony

our home

belly cast!

muah!

February. Wow.

Well as it seems to go, so much has been happening that I just haven’t had time to update, which means I’ll only be skimming the surface here.
We moved to Iowa City a couple days before New Years. Days later, we decided to move out of the rather dumpy place we had chosen from a distance, which entailed a lot of headaches and stress, but thankfully we were able to pay to get out of the lease and found a temporary place. Now we are moving again, and we sure hope it’s the last time for a couple years….lease signed until August 2013! This is where Cricket will be born, and we couldn’t be more excited about that. The one bedroom house on a gravel road in town backs up to a beautiful cemetery and park, and was actually featured in a painting by Grant Wood. It was built in 1848!

Between Texas and here we had quite the adventures...first selling our car in one day on Craigslist after having packed it up, upon realizing it might not make the journey (which was nice in the end, because we got to come up together in Justin's truck, but with less stuff than anticipated). Kansas City for the holidays and my grandparents' 70th wedding anniversary. Then Des Moines for a few days. And finally to Iowa City...with all our crap.

Here in Iowa City, Justin is working as an assistant-teacher at the Montessori School of Iowa City and I am doing some office work for my midwife and the midwife who I will very soon be doing births with. I was nannying for a 6mth old, but I started having a lot of contractions and wound up in the hospital overnight being treated for preterm labor, so I promptly stopped that work. The hospital experience was pretty icky, but ultimately good for me as a midwife…it’s all part of my journey in learning and experiencing different aspects of pregnancy and birth. I just thank God, Allah, the Devine, Universe, etc that I am not going to have to have the baby in the hospital… a few hours of being strapped to the monitor and I understood on a bodily level why so many women end up with C-Sections and epidurals in the hospital—you just become so disconnected from your body, not to mention become so physically uncomfortable and agitated! I was on bedrest for awhile and am just now getting back to normalish activity. I really miss going for nice long walks and yoga classes though! Soon enough I’ll be back to it, but I am still having a lot of contractions (several an hour), so I try to take it easy.

Other than that, Justin and I have been fighting lots of colds due to lack of sleep (from last week’s events), stress, and bugs from the Montessori school making their way home. Justin is also getting more and more involved with a farm 10 miles north of Iowa City, where he will be working full-time this summer, and hopes to get a little bee/honey operation going there as well asap.

The weather here is beautiful. I can’t help but delight in the sunshine, but Justin keeps reminding me that this is not normal weather and the prairie is suffering… yeaahhh but... :(

That’s it for now! I’ll be doing a 10-day meditation sit the first week and a half of March, so I shall be incommunicado.

Love!

Our little Cricket (this was almost 5 weeks ago at 22wks)

26wks

me, CPM

I can't believe I forgot to say too that I passed my boards and am now officially a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM). So that is very exciting for me; it's what I've been indirectly and directly working toward since early 2006 when I wrote the grant to go to Bali, Indonesia to study prenatal and perinatal customs, and saw my first birth.

Now, unfortunately that doesn't mean I can legally practice in my home state of Iowa yet. This year will be the 3rd year to have legislation at the capital to decriminalize and hopefully license midwives in Iowa. Iowa will hopefully become the 28th state (I believe) to do this. ALL of the other states are currently working to do the same. So if you live in Iowa, get in touch with your state legislator and tell them you support the decriminalization and licencing of midwives in Iowa!

Happy Winter Solstice

Well I'm 18weeks almost (4 1/2 months) and next week we are leaving our Austin lives to be Northerners. I am on a mission to eat as many tamales as possible before then. I think I've already had my fill of breakfast tacos and huevos rancheros by now, but I'll probably slide in another set of each before we leave Friday morning.

I just worked my last shift at YogaYoga, the best yoga studio ever, and probably worked my last shifts as a sub at the Montessori schools and a PRN nurse at a nursing home. Now my work is packing and cleaning. We realized we were doing this exact same thing at this time last year. We had a good laugh and mused: what the hell is wrong with us? hahaha

I've had some recent wonderful Austin experiences lately; trying to cram them in before I live in tiny (wonderful in different ways) Iowa City again. The farmers' market is still going on (temps are in the 50s here) and last Weds Justin and I feasted on vegan, organic tamales at one. A week ago we had a chakra balancing session with Tibetan bowls, where Everitt (one of my yoga instructors) put the bowls along our spines and at our head and feet and played them, as well as played the gong. Last night we went to a winter solstice gong ceremony with probably 50 other people. It started with a short kundalini yoga class, followed by laying back and having the vibrations of gongs wash over us, played by 3 different people. Also yesterday I just happened to walk by my neighbor's house, where they were hanging out and doing cleansing ceremonies with a Huichol Shaman from Mexico. He was delighted that I was pregnant and did a ceremony with me which involved lots of spitting, brushing me with a feather, sucking energy from my body, and rubbing me with something that smelled like alcohol, menthol, and herbs. In the end he said the baby was very happy and healthy.

A less unique experience occurred a few weeks ago, and is really not Austin-esque at all, but it's fairly telling of our lives. We had a giftcard to Walmart (don't ask), which is the only reason we stepped foot in there. Since we never go, it was like an exotic vacation: looking at all the people, experiencing the bright lighting, the smell of rotting produce, etc. Justin mentioned he wanted some coconut ice cream and we doubted they would have it, but wouldn't you know, they did! So we each got a pint, and after making the rounds and getting the full experience of Walmart, we rounded it out by sitting in the McDonalds, using plastic spoons borrowed from them, and ate our coconut milk icecream, while we watched other people spend their Saturday nights as well in the Walmart: working, hanging out, shopping, eating, whatever. Why this story took up a whole paragraph and the stories about solstice ceremony, gongs, tibetan bowls, chakras, and a Huichol shaman had to share a paragraph, is probably also indicitive of where I'm at in my life and what is really "out there" to me. Haha.

We're heading to San Antonio in a bit for Christmas with Justin's family. I'm excited to be making a strawberry rhubarb crisp for them. I ran across rhubarb at the grocery store (eeep imported from Holland!), and just had to get some because Justin has never had it before, because generally they don't sell it down here since it appears they do not grow it...

Loves!
Rachel

gong and bowls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hncJzoAiAw