Well, we made it through the first year.

I can't believe everything we've packed into a year. Michael giving up legal practice; moving; study; kid stuff - some of it very positive such as feeling as though they've finally settled into our new family dynamic, some of it difficult such as getting them settled into a new town/school and sorting out visitation with their father; financial stress caused by ongoing dispute over payout for the partnership; and of course a pregnancy.

Throughout it all we've experienced trauma, grief, sadness, laughter, contentment, stress, pain (physical as well as emotional), excitement, nerves, anxiety, joy. And throughout it all we haven't once wavered in how close we feel to each other. We've been the one constant and I'm kind of proud of that.

Anyway... the anniversary. We spent the day with the kids, which was what we wanted. We had to go to a BBQ (a work do for Michael) but we were all together. The kids happily came and went from us to playing outside with other kids and that was nice. We went shopping and bought the first plants for Kat's garden.

We said right from the start that we would buy a plant every year on her anniversary to make a garden and also that we didn't want to buy the first of them when she died; we wanted to buy the first one on the first anniversary. Our intention all along had been to buy a rose each year but in the lead up to actually buying something I was getting nervous about growing roses in this climate. We decided to go to the nursery and look at roses first then if we didn't want one to look at a lemon tree. I liked the idea of her tree being productive, of using the fruit from it. And Michael liked the lemon being yellow for Kat (it's the colour we associate as "hers" since so much of what we bought for her unintentionally turned out to be yellow).

So we got to the nursery and the roses looked decidedly sick and there were no fruit trees. Next stop - Big W. The first thing we found was a lime, the second was an olive. As soon as I saw the olive tree it just felt right. Especially when I read the care instructions and it mentioned the olive being a symbol of peace and happiness. We walked around with the olive in our hands but kept going back to the lime as well. We stood and talked about it for a moment and decided to get both.

Just as we walked towards the limes to pick one up the kids came running over excitedly saying "there's a butterfly". We turned around and there was the most magnificent blue butterfly fluttering directly above where we had just been standing as we decided to get both plants. I turned to hug Michael and found myself sobbing. Stood there in his arms, weeping into his shoulder in the nursery at Big W. Didn't care.

Our trees have now been potted up and they are both beautiful.

"Innocence and Experience"

I've written before - although I can't remember if it was on here or in the personal diary I kept for 3 months before starting this - about "Innocence and Experience", a series of poems by William Blake that Michael and his mum talk about a lot. In the days after Kat died I felt that the hope we/I had held for her had been Innocence; her death was Experience.

The first anniversary is upon us now. I've been so focused for almost a year now on the 20th November being Kat's Day that it was only last night I stopped to think that there's another anniversary. The 19th is the day we found out our girl had passed away.

I haven't really done a great deal of "this time last year"... Of course there has been some of that, I think it's only natural in the first year of grieving. I remembered the date that we found out I was pregnant with her, for example. And being pregnant there has also been an element of "at this stage of pregnancy with Kat..." but again, only really at key times, such as 15 weeks (when I'd been 'sick'), 18 weeks (first ultrasound that showed any problems) and 25 weeks. All in all though my grief has very much been in the present and I haven't spent all that much time looking back. Now though it's the anniversary and so I look back.

The 20th is Kat's Day. It's the day we will consciously involve the kids in spending time together as a family in memory of Kat. We will buy her a rose plant and some flowers to put in a new vase that is just for her flowers when we happen to buy them throughout the year. It was the day we got to see and hold our girl.

The 19th marks the worst moment of my life. Of course there was a whole lot of pain still to come; if I could measure pain as such, probably the moment Kat was laid on my chest stands out as the most raw, animalistic moment. But hearing that there was "no heartbeat... I'm sorry to tell you that your baby has passed away" was... the moment. It was the moment my soul was ripped apart and my own heart seemed to stop for a moment and I stood staring down a black hole in which the rest of my life would be lived as a person who knew the unimaginable pain of outliving a child.

Today is the 18th. And on the 18th I was still Innocent. I thought our girl was still alive and that the next day we were going away to Newcastle for our appointment to see her heart beating on the ultrasound. Most of all? I was looking forward to having a couple of days alone with Michael.

It's the weekend of the butterflies.

This could make me sad, but instead I'm feeling really peaceful today and enjoying the memory.

The actual date is tomorrow, but it was this weekend last year that we went over to Michael's parents' house and we all went up to see Jon English playing an outdoor night concert in the Warrumbungles. I had a simply wonderful weekend. I felt that the seven of us - Michael and I, the kids and Kat and Michael's parents - were a family. It was the word that kept coming to my mind, along with connected. I felt so incredibly connected to Kat. I felt the kids connected to Michael and his parents. His mum and I were so excited about Kat and were enjoying looking at a pregnancy website she had found. At that stage I was starting to think that a virus had interrupter Kat's growth and that she would always remain that few weeks small for her age - which in the long run would be nothing at all. I was worried about the lack of amniotic fluid and what it meant for her lung development but I thought there would be something the doctors could do for her after she was born. We were worried about her, but I was also the most optimistic out of any stage in the pregnancy. And she was Kat. It had been confirmed from the amnio that we were having a girl. She wasn't "the baby" anymore. She was Kat. She was real.

As we sat outside in a beautiful spot in the Warrumbungles, all of us together eating a picnic dinner and listening to music, a mass of orange butterflies appeared right in front of me. Rory and I were sitting together and the two of us were captivated by them. As I watched they started to gather around my feet. I still have no explanation for why, but I looked at those butterflies fluttering around my feet and it felt like it was connected to Kat. Of course, the next (and only other) time I would see a mass of orange butterflies was in our backyard after her funeral. A single one came into our house and I just KNEW it was her. Thus began the butterfly connection.

When we got home on the Sunday night I finally got out the book we had bought for her a couple of weeks earlier and read to her. It was the book of cat poems that Cats is based on. I read to her and she kicked and kicked and kicked. It was the most she had kicked in weeks and weeks and I thought that everything was going to be OK. Later that night I got my Cats DVD out and watched it. The next morning I woke up from dreaming of Kat as a grown woman standing on a dark stage singing Memory. I was positive for one moment that she had died. I immediately pushed the thought out of my mind and continued to feel the happy optimism that had built over the weekend. In hindsight I never felt her move again. Very occasionally I would feel... something... that I thought was a small kick. I continued to feel them for a few weeks after she was born, so I don't know what it was.

I've always believed that Kat had something to do with my mind that last week. The last ultrasound we went into was the only one we had that I expected to see her heart beating. All the others, even the three in the first trimester, I went into absolutely convinced that there would be no heart beat. Before that last one though I spent the day getting more and more nervous, thinking that I was imagining the worst. I was imagining that she wouldn't have grown a full two weeks' worth since the last one. That there was even less amniotic fluid. That there were more pockets of fluid on her body. But underlying all of it, I was looking forward to seeing her heart beat. I was expecting to see it. We sat in the waiting room at the hospital seeing people carry their babies into the paediatric clinic and saying "that will be us soon". I have always believed that Kat wouldn't let me entertain the idea that she was lying dead inside me.

Since Kat died I've struggled, more so in the beginning than now but still now to some extent, with the hope that we held for our girl. I've resented it knowing that as soon as I contracted that virus her fate was sealed and we had no way of knowing it. I had no way of knowing that something inside me had attacked my precious baby girl. But today I find myself remembering that last weekend that she was alive, remembering the hope and cherishing it. I cherish that so close to the end and all that came afterwards we had that one happy weekend.

Coming up on Monday, 19 days before the first anniversary of Kat’s stillbirth, is the anniversary of my mum’s death. 21 years. She passed away at the age of 45 after a 4-year battle with cancer.

At 12 and in year 7, I was too old to feel like a child anymore but too young to realise just how young I still was.

Whilst I mourned – and was encouraged to mourn – part of me felt that I should be happier for her than I was sad for the rest of us. She wasn’t in pain anymore. I also felt a little less entitled to grieve because we had known for so long that it was coming.

In the years that followed I would of course experience a lot of reactions to her death. I felt guilt. Her life’s wish was to see her children grown and happy. My brother was married with a baby on the way; my sister was in her final year of teacher’s college and already had a position for the following year; and there I was still in high school. I felt that if it wasn’t for me she would have had her wish. Much later, as I entered my 20s I would go through another grieving period as I saw that the people around me still had their mums, still had relationships with them. I grieved for what I would never have and for what had been taken from my brother and sister.

Mum, over the years I have missed you as I navigated being a teenaged girl and becoming a woman. I’ve missed you at my big events. I’ve seen you in my dreams and I’ve talked to you a lot. I’ve longed to have you walk through my front door, sit down at my table, drink coffee with me and talk. I saw you with babies before I knew I was pregnant. I felt you standing next to me as I stood beside my son’s cot watching him sleep. I held my daughter while listening to “Nan’s Song” and saw her lift her head to look at… something… over my shoulder and then lift her hand and wave. I’ve missed my children knowing their Grandma, wearing the clothes you would have made and eating the cakes you would have cooked. I’ve had special moments putting their hands on your tree for the first time. I’ve felt the weight of your hands on my back when I was sick. I’ve learned the lessons you tried to teach me that I couldn’t understand at the time. I cherish you telling me that I will always be beautiful, no matter how old and wrinkly I get, because I have a beautiful heart and it will always shine through to the outside. I’ve asked you to be with our girl because we can’t be.

Mum, part of me will always be that 12 year old girl who was too young to understand the enormity of her mother’s death. Part of me will always grieve for her. Just as now, part of me is forever frozen in time, a woman at a graveside watching as her daughter’s coffin is lowered into it – for how is it possible that that woman ever got back up?

Mum, there have been times when the only thing that kept me going was the sure knowledge that the world would keep turning, the sun would keep rising and we would keep going. We would eventually learn to live with the pain. I learned that from you Mum, over the course of 20 years. And I thank you for it

I've been struggling again the last few days. The Remembrance Day last Friday seemed to bring grief back out a bit. I tried all day to think of it as a beautiful, positive day - which it was - but I was just so sad all day as well and haven't really picked back up since. It's 11 months today since Kat's stillbirth, so the anniversary is looming and this time last year we were in the thick of doctor's appointments, ultrasounds, tests, worry and uncertainty. It's also coming very close to the anniversary of my Mum's death - 1 November - and I'm feeling it. I very rarely cry about Mum anymore. This year is 21 years since she died. I miss her all the time, but it's been a long time since I actually cried about her. I'm feeling it this year though.

Physically I'm struggling too. I have symphisis again, which I thought for a while I'd managed to escape this pregnancy but all the lower back and hip pain I've had for most of the pregnancy are connected to it. It just took a bit longer this time for it to show up in the pubic bone area. (Charming, I know.) I've had pain from scoliosis for the first time in about 13 years as well so my entire back is really sore. I'm not sleeping very well because of it all, which makes everything else so much harder to deal with. And now, after finally getting my asthma under control with the right dosage of medication, it's playing up again. I'm fairly sure it's due to simply being at this stage of pregnancy, with bub squashing my lungs so much more. There are times I stand up and am unable to take a step. My body just freezes up in pain. All I can do is keep on breathing and wait this out. As the doctor said today, the only cure is childbirth.

I hadn't been too bad with anxiety in this pregnancy, especially in recent weeks. There have of course been some things that have been hard to deal with - breaking out in eczema at 15 weeks (all I saw at first was a red rash at 15 weeks - panic stations), that ultrasound where I was asked to come back after lunch and I didn't know what they were seeing or not seeing, getting to and past 25 weeks and going through a stage where I had trouble believing this baby was still alive or that she would be for much longer. This time there's not really any one thing I can point to as being the cause for me to feel anxious. If anything, perhaps now I'm getting to the later stages (34 weeks today) and bub's movements are starting to slow as she runs out of room I'm worrying about the decrease in movement. I know all too well what it's like to have a baby stop moving inside me. It's not an alarming slow down of movement, she has fairly regular awake times and there's no doubt I feel her throughout the day. It's just that there is a little less now than a couple of weeks ago. Also I had some contractions over the weekend, regular ones for about three hours. The same thing happened twice with Rory and I was admitted to hospital both times, at 32 and 36 weeks, then he ended up being born at 41 weeks. These contractions, while regular and getting closer together, weren't increasing in strength so I went to bed and they stopped then after about half an hour. Caira's heartbeat sounded the same nice, steady way it always does and she was moving the whole time so I wasn't particularly worried about her but I've been worried ever since about premature labour. At 34 weeks I'm sure she'd be fine, but I don't want her going into a humidicrib when she's born. I want her with me for cuddles. On that issue at least, I did get some good news today. The doctor told me that from the report of the last ultrasound, my cervical length was 3.5cm and that anything above 3cm precludes pre-term labour.

Little kitty Kat, I'm absolutely positive you spent some time with us last night.

We lit a candle in your memory for the International Wave of Light as part of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. The idea is to light a candle at 7pm and leave it burning for one hour, so that around the world there will be a continual light burning for a 24 hour period in memory of lost babies.

We took some photos of your candle to contribute to online forums about the Wave of Light and as I held the camera up there was a bar of silver white light right in front of the candle. I moved the camera around and it disappeared... it was only in front of the candle. I got the kids to turn off the lamps behind me, but it was still there. Nothing came up in the photos though, but that bar of light didn't move from the camera screen. Later in the night when I wanted to get a picture of Rory and Lenin it was gone.

I thought almost at once that it was you Kat.

Then I saw you in my dreams again last night. Again, I was pregnant and at the same stage that I am in reality. You looked a little less than a year old - so that would take it from your November birth date instead of the time you were due to be born. You had been a seriously sick little baby but you were home with us, sitting up and smiling. You had permanent health problems and we knew we would be looking after you for the rest of your life. We also knew that Caira was going to be born soon and that she would be healthy and go on to have her own life doing her own things. We were just so happy to be having both our girls with us. And you.... you were so incredibly happy. You were by your daddy's side, this little blonde girl, just the way I always pictured you before you died. Even the day we found out you had died, I saw you once more right there in the hospital room, by your daddy's side. I know you came to us through him. So there you were, next to daddy and smiling, smiling, smiling to light up the whole world. You were with your family. We know that was what you wanted more than anything, we know it's why you came to us - to have a family. We are your family Kat and you are in ours. Always baby girl. Always. We love you so much.

I had another ultrasound this morning and I'm riding the high of it going really well and being free from anxiety for another day. I knew I was nervous before having it (have been for five weeks, ever since I was referred for it) but I don't think I realised just how stressed I was about this scan until it was over and it was all good news.

To recap, I was referred for the scan because my tummy was a bit bigger than it should have been for dates. The first doctor told me that much, then smiled and said 'just to be safe!' (made me feel worse); the second doctor wouldn't even comment that far, just felt my tummy, frowned and asked when my ultrasound was booked; then finally I had one of my first doctors yesterday and he said that they have no way of knowing if my tummy size was due to baby being big or me being big. They want to be able to monitor bub's growth throughout the pregnancy and in these circumstances an ultrasound is the only way for them to do so.

I had a very nice woman doing the scan today. She told me every little thing she was doing, every measurement she was taking and why. She didn't even know beforehand what our history was, just that we had been referred for a measurement scan and that the doctor was concerned that baby might have been a bit too big. It turned out that bub is exactly the right size for dates (32w 1d), fluid level was normal, heart rate normal, blood flow in cord normal. And very definitely a girl! Her girl parts were on show and pointed out to me.

When Kat first died I was terrified of having another girl. I hoped with all my heart that we would have a boy when we eventually had another baby. We had picked out Kathryn as our girl's name almost as soon as we were together (it had been Michael's favourite since he was in primary school and I loved his Kat-with-a-K suggestion) and I just couldn't imagine us having a daughter who wasn't Kathryn. Who would our girl be if she wasn't our little kitty Kat?

While I was thinking like that I also had the presence of mind to know that it was just one indication that I was nowhere near ready to have another baby. I couldn't have with any conscience tried to have a baby when I was terrified of the 50% chance that it would be a girl. I knew I couldn't have a baby until I was ready to welcome a CHILD, not just a boy.

I became somewhat obsessed with trying to pick out another girl's name. In my mind, if there was a name to attach to a future girl I could start to imagine a girl who wasn't Kat and I could be closer to being ready for another baby. I must add that all of these thoughts were occurring over the course of the first few days, not weeks.

During the week after Kat died, when Michael's parents were staying with us, the four of us were talking and listening to music in the lounge room one day. Michael had album covers displaying as a slide show on the TV while the music played and I was only half-heartedly there at all. I wasn't really paying attention to either the conversation or the pictures on the screen. My mind was drifting. This one particular album cover came up and, in my memory stayed on the screen for a lot longer than any of the others did. I kept seeing it out of the corner of my eye and was drawn to keep looking back at it. Eventually I looked at it properly and just stared at the whole thing without really seeing it for a while. Finally, I read the name. It was "Ca Ira - There is Hope". As I read those words something inside me clicked and I said "that's our girl's name". Michael's Dad was equally drawn to the cover and asked Michael what it was. This seemed to add to my sense that the name was important. Then Michael answered his Dad and I was sure of it - Ca Ira is an opera (which Michael loves) that was written by Roger Waters (who Michael loves, from Pink Floyd who he adores). As soon as we were alone I turned to Michael and said "those two words run together into one name - that's our girl". He loved it instantly. Our girl would be Caira.

For a while I had gone off the idea of a middle name. Rory, Sienna and Kat all have middle names that hold special meaning for me in relation to their deceased grandparents without simply repeating their names. When Kat first died we toyed with having Kathryn as a middle name, but then we found Caira and didn't like the sound of Caira Kathryn so we thought perhaps we would have Caira Rose. After a little while I went off using Rose as I didn't want to start just continuing someone else's name when I had deliberately not done that with the other kids. Caira will have both of our last names - mine effectively as a middle name - after I decided the day Kat was born that I wanted her to carry both our last names. To me, Caira wouldn't have had my last name as one of hers had it not been for Kat, plus the mother's maiden name as a middle name is a family tradition in my maternal grandmother's family, so I felt that I was continuing my tradition of meaningful middle names.

A couple of months ago though, Michael brought up middle names so we got talking about them again. When I was first pregnant with Kat I had the song Hey Jude stuck in my head for days and as I heard the words "under your skin" I had such a strong feeling I was pregnant - which of course I was. Jude became our boy's middle name - Dylan Jude - both from the song and after Michael's mum. By the time I was pregnant again I'd changed my mind again about Jude and liked Michael with Dylan. But I kept thinking Jade for a girl. I've always quite liked the name, especially as a middle name - it sounds nice with so many other names - and it runs together Jude (as a nod to the pregnancy with Kat) and Jan (the name my mum was known by).

So - now we are on the 8 week countdown to meeting our Caira Jade!