It seems that every body has its breaking point; I reached mine yesterday and it was a boil on my leg. Actually, I'm not sure if it was the boil or the tiny cut on my little toe.

It made a lot more sense when I did a quick re-cap on the last 15 months: anxiety for our sick baby; grief; trauma x 2 (sudden end of business partnership and car accident); moving; change of climate increasing asthma to point where I need medication every day; pregnancy - not just pregnancy but one fraught with grief and anxiety as well as symphisis and insomnia; emergency caesarean; infection; effects of antibiotics on my newborn baby (upset tummy, unsettled, grizzly, not sleeping); ongoing bleeding from bladder; very painful haemorrhoids; a boil and to top it all off MY LITTLE TOE HURTS.

I feel like a punching bag and the blows just keep on coming.

It's school holidays and I can't sleep during the day with Rory and Sienna home.

Caira's taken to waking up at about 9.30pm and taking 2 hours to settle again, so I haven't been getting to sleep until about midnight. Even though looking after the kids isn't hard work as such (older ones entertain themselves, I don't need to "do" much for them and Caira really only needs feeding, changing, bathing and cuddling at the moment) I'm emotionally and physically exhausted.

The good news (for me) is that once upon a time I would have crumpled to the floor in a sobbing heap. Last night Michael hugged me and I quietly cried a few tears. We went to bed early (well, 10.00 instead of midnight) and I only woke up once, at 12.45 to feed Caira. Was completely oblivious to the fact that Michael was up with her for 3 hours after that, about 2.5 hours of which he was lying in our bed with her. Slept right through it. I felt awful that he'd been up so long but so very, very grateful that I slept. I know I wasn't up to being up last night. Michael told me all through the pregnancy that he wanted to be up with her through the night to let me sleep as much as possible. He wanted to take as much of the load off me as he could. (I kept telling him that since I would be breast feeding there wasn't much he would be able to do through the night, plus unlike him I can sleep during the day.) It still kind of surprises me after almost three years whenever I see him DO the things he SAYS. Not because it happens rarely - it happens all the time. I've just never known anyone else who DOES so much.

In a completely unrelated matter - I got an email from uni last week about my grade point average. Obviously mine is too low. I didn't complete second semester last year or first semester this year before taking an intermission for 18 months. I got an email stating that I needed to present a case to the uni for why I should be allowed to continue studying. I told them that I was on an intermission; that in first semester this year I was resuming study after complications in my pregnancy resulted in the stillbirth of my daughter but that I had found myself unable to keep up with my study due to grief combined with a subsequent pregnancy. (I got an email back saying I was fine to resume study in 2012 and that the email had been sent due to an automated system.) I cried and cried and cried. I hate still dealing with fallout from Kat's death. Daily (and forever) grief is something I've come to accept. Most days it's just a knot of awareness in the back of my mind that someone is missing. But then every now and then I have to more actively deal with it and it breaks the wound wide open again. I miss her so much. I wish so much that we could have all three of our girls with us.