The photo of Michael and me that is on this page sits in a frame in our lounge room. It's one of my favourite photos ever because (a) it's a nice picture of us and (b) because when it was taken we were both utterly exhausted from grief and trauma but when we saw that photo we both just thought we looked happy. It became a symbol for us of how we got through unbelievably bad times together and all the while held it together calmly and quietly and with enormous love. Of course we cried - my god, we sobbed and howled and clung to each other like we were drowning in a raging torrent. But I also remember how quietly we just sat together talking about what needed to get done and both of us putting in equal effort to do it. And that through it all there was so much love. This photo captures that.

I sat here the other day looking at that picture and thought that I couldn't look that happy now. I felt so weighed down by everything that has happened in the last 15 months. I should be celebrating the arrival of our beautiful baby girl - and I am (I really am) - but I was so weighed down by my health problems coming after so many other bad things. I kept on thinking "what next?" when normally I would think "it will all be OK". Or else I would just get on with it and not think about it until the storm had passed and I had time to process.

I couldn't believe that I looked at a picture taken 10 weeks after my daughter died; 8 weeks after Michael's business partner suddenly pulled the plug on him; 5 weeks after my parents-in-law were seriously injured in a car accident; 3 weeks after moving and a couple of hours after we heard that Rory and Sienna's other baby sister had been born (when all we wanted was their baby sister in our arms) and longed to feel that light-hearted again.

Today though I've been home for a few days. I've been eating nice, healthy food and getting some exercise. I've got my toe nails cut, finger nails filed, legs shaved and hair done. My leg's improving.

And right this second? I'm typing this one-handed as I have Caira curled in my other arm. I just looked at her as she sits here wriggling and waving her arms about. She's watching the ceiling fan go round and her eyes are shining and she has the biggest, most beautiful smile. I have to go change her nappy and there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

All is well.

I'm home, temporarily. I'm on a 'day pass' from hospital, where I've been for the last ten days and won't be discharged from for at least another two.

That boil on my leg turned out to not be a boil. Or it was a boil but it was caused by a Golden Staph infection. We went away over Christmas and were keeping an eye on it the whole time, knowing I really should see a doctor when we got home. It was incredibly painful and I wanted it lanced so it would be gone - taking the pain with it. Oh and also there was a very large red patch around it, indicating infection. I kept hoping that when it drained the infection would clear. Instead, as it started draining the red patch got bigger and hotter and my foot swelled up. So off to the doctor I went, the morning after we got home. I expected that I would walk away with a prescription for some antibiotics and was happily anticipating the next week and a half at home *with Michael*. His office was closed for that length of time and we had been looking forward for months to that week and a bit at home alone with our new baby.

The first thing the doctor said was "I think you're very close to needing to go to hospital". By that time the boil, which had that morning shrunk a little, had turned into an abcess the size of a golf ball, the entirety of my lower right leg was bright red and my foot was twice its normal size.

She called in a colleague for a second opinion and well, off to hospital I went. Still expecting at that stage to be in for a couple of days of IV antibiotics, just as I was two days after bringing Caira home when I developed an infection in the uterus.

What I didn't expect was that the abcess would test positive for MRSA, or Golden Staph. And that instead of a couple of days IV antibiotics (which I'd already had by that time) I would end up with 4 days of very strong IV antibiotics and not be allowed home as soon as I started on the oral ones.

We've waited so long to be home with our baby. And on Monday (when it's expected I'll be discharged) I will have been in hospital for a day short of half her life.

Dear Universe: I've had about as much as I can stand for a while. OK?

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.

It's taken 10 days to get the chance to post this, but....

CAIRA IS HERE!!!!!!!!!!

She was born by emergency caesarean on Wednesday 1st December, her due date. My waters broke (in an absolute flood all around the house!) around 10.00 the night before. I'd been having irregular contractions for a few hours previously and almost as soon as we were in the car on our way to hospital they started coming every three minutes although only mild. I was in very early labour on arrival at hospital and five hours later, stretched out in a warm bath with essential oils and Michael brushing my hair, just as I was thinking that the last couple had been much stronger, contractions... just... stopped. We ended up getting a couple of hours sleep before I was induced in the morning. Contractions started again and I was assessed by the obstetrician who found that Caira's head was down but sitting high in the pelvis. It had been very low the night before. I was instructed to remain upright to allow gravity to help her come down. I spent the next three hours going between standing and swaying (sometimes with Michael behind me, his hands on my hips giving my back his body heat) and sitting on the birthing ball, leaning forward on the bed. It caused excruciating pelvic pain though, having to sit with legs apart in order to lean forward so I would sit until I couldn't stand it anymore and then stand until I couldn't stay on my feet anymore. Somewhere in there I saw the doctor again and Caira had turned sideways. Just before midday, after labouring for three hours and as I was requesting an epidural, the doctor came in to do another scan to check Caira's position. She was head down again. Immediately after the scan I went to the toilet and the doctor stayed in the room to do another scan when my bladder was empty. In just that few minutes, Caira turned around to breach. At that point, and with me lying there saying "just get her out, just get her out" the doctor ordered a Caesarean due to an unstable lie. Because my waters had broken there was no way for the doctor to turn Caira around again and even if she did turn there was no guarantee at that point with all her movement that she would stay in any one position.

So, an hour and a half later I had experienced the extreme weirdness that is feeling pressure and pulling on my insides, hearing snipping and knowing it was my body being cut but not feeling any pain and there we were in the operating theatre and listening to Caira's first cry. When we heard that sound we both burst into cry-laughter. We were holding hands, looking at each other and waiting to catch sight of our daughter and I was saying "she's alive, she's alive, we did it, she's breathing, she's crying, she's alive!" In that moment, despite those words, I wasn't actively thinking of Kat. This was Caira's moment and I was so excited to meet her. My over-riding emotion was utter excitement.

Caira was taken by the paediatrician for a check and Michael cut the cord. His first words when he saw her were "she's absolutely gorgeous". Nurses were telling me how big she was, that they thought she would be over 4kg. Finally, all wrapped in a blanket, Caira was laid down on my shoulder and Michael and I sat/lay together looking at our daughter. Her eyes were shut tight and she kept trying to open them but not doing it. A nurse came and shielded her eyes from the theatre lights and she opened them; we both saw that her eyes were the exact same colour as mine. She closed them again and the next time she opened them they were dark blue. Her hair looked red but once the vernix dried it was much fairer, more blond. It has started to fall out now and what's left is darkening. In some light it still looks red though. All in all she looks very much like me. And she wasn't over 4kg - she was 3768g or 8 pound 3.

She has been a dream baby so far. In her first week she had the usual second night feed and scream fest that they all have but otherwise she went five to six hours between night feeds every night and two to four hours during the day. She rarely cries - although when she does she really lets us know about it! The kid is loud! When we pick her up we could swear she's smiling. Michael's mum said the same thing. Her mouth kind of opens, her eyes shine and her whole face glows. One thing I have never, ever seen or heard any other newborn do... we will often go to check on her in the bassinette and she will be wide awake, just lying there happily looking at the side of her bed with her hand outstretched. The first time I saw it I was sure that my vision from all those months ago was true - both my girls in the one cot, one a newborn and the other a little older but still a baby sitting up on the left side (as I look at her) of her sister's head watching her.

The main other thing to write about now is that I was readmitted to hospital after a day and a half at home with an infection. I've been on antibiotics for a few days now and they've unsettled Caira, but nothing we can't deal with. She's crying a bit more and wanting more feeds but we are fine.

All in all she is an absolute delight. She's a beautiful girl in every way and we are so much in love with her.

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.