My Mikaela Roo

How did a year already go by so quickly?

How did you transform from a tiny floppy newborn to a happy, feisty, ultra-inquisitive, walking little girl in just 12 short months?

In your first few months of life,  I was so scared to sleep in case you didn't wake up - I was convinced that sleep would steal you away, like it did with your big brother.  Oh it was so hard to open up my heart again and let go of that crippling fear of loss.

And yet somehow as the days and weeks have passed by, that fear has subsided and made room for so much more love, laughter, silliness and belief in the goodness of life.  Your cry every morning is the most beautiful sound to my ears, even at 5am. I love creeping into your room at night and just listening to you breathe. Watching you grow and change every single day is a privilege that I will never take for granted.

Happy first birthday my nunu, may we have so many more to celebrate with you.

(This was taken today - I do believe that looks to be a hand on her hip?)

I bumped into someone today who asked me how my trip was. What trip? I wanted to ask. We got back 2 weeks ago and it feels very far away. I've had a lot of people asking me for photos from our holiday and am determined not to let a whole year go by before I get to them! (Yes, Bali is still to come!)

I spoke the other night at the South African Wedding Photographers Annual Party about the importance of playing and photographing things that you're not paid to shoot, just for fun. We spent a lot of time at our villa just chilling (photos of that to follow, it was great!) and not too much time out and about but the few times that we were, it was great to just take photos for fun. As you'll see I like taking photos of bicycles. It was so good to wonder around a foreign country for just a bit and notice abstract details and different sights for no other reason than just because.

I place your baby sister to sleep, night after night in your cot, and think in disbelief that we did just the same thing with you 18 months ago.

We kept your cot - determined not to be superstitious, but needing something to change. We stripped, scrubbed and sanded the dark varnish off every little slat of oak for what seemed like days, as if this act alone could erase the horror of the image it contained.

If I had known what the morning held for us, maybe I would have read your story a little bit slower. Maybe I would have hugged you for that little bit longer, savoured your soft, puppy skin and breathed you all in, so deeply, just that little bit more.

It had been a long day and I hoped that you wouldn't kick up a fuss going to sleep. If I'd known the future, maybe I would never have let you close your eyes, never put you down. Maybe I would have looked at your beautifully alive face just one more time.

You've been gone from this world for as long as you were here. 18 months is not such a long time, yet oh so limitless.

So many days I think we are fine. And we are, we are fine - after thinking that we could never ever be happy again, we have so many happy moments. We are immensely grateful for the here and now and what we have in this moment. We live more in the now than we used to. We savour, slow down and breathe. Deeply. Often.

But deep deep down, I know we will never be the same people and that this world will never be what it was for us before.

You should be three.

I like these images taken of you with my lomo film camera - you were 15 months old and sitting still for even a split-second was not an option. We made friends with pretty much eveyone on the beach. The soft, grainy, bluriness of these echos some part of our new world.

{insert local Cape accent}

'Gees-like it man, I thought that was a teedy-bear.'

So I've been hounded by more than a few people for images of my own beautiful baby girl. And granted, it's been a while.

Here are a few images taken a few weeks ago of the little princess herself in what we call her 'Bling Suit'. The suit is not far from pink (more purple I guess), it's velvet, and yes, those are diamante studs on the front. In the shape of a heart. This was not given to us, I actually bought this for her. This from the lady who swore she would not be one of those mothers who adorned their little princesses in pink. All it took was one stranger to say 'what a lovely little boy' on a trip out dressed in orange  - and she's been decked out in anything very girly since. Who would have thought?

Where is time going to? She's 12 weeks already. (Although she's about 9 weeks in these photos, one can only be SO organised!)

It's been a year since we stepped into any parent's worst nightmare. A rare Saturday off that was meant to be spent with my family exploring our beautiful city turned into our own horror story as I found Jude dead in his cot. So unexpected, out of the blue. So final. How could a little boy who played around as he ate his dinner and laughed with us the night before be dead? How could we have been talking just the night before about how happy and utterly content we were? And how could we have slept right through his silent death? Surely some kind of motherly instinct kicks in when your child dies in the room next door?

I sometimes think that maybe if I'd never walked down the passage to his room that we could pretend that our little world was still perfect and intact. But as I stepped into Jude's room that morning, we were hurled into a different existence. Heart-pumping adrenalin. Phone calls. Police cars outside. An incompetent policeman. Statements. A detective. A team of orange-suited paramedics stepping over his covered body in the lounge. Friends standing by silently, unbelieving. The irony of waiting for a photographer to arrive. A trauma counsellor sitting with me who said 'Breathe. Just breathe. Don't forget to breathe. All you have to do is breathe.' And it took so much effort just to do that.

Four hours after waking up on our 'normal' day, I watched in disbelief as my son was stuffed into a bodybag and taken to an orange and silver pathology van. I wondered numbly how I would ever survive - to be honest I didn't really want to survive. Everyday the week after Jude's death I swam in the cold Cape Town sea, silently willing the cold Atlantic water to sweep me very very far away.

And here we are now at the last of the firsts, constantly thinking back to this time last year. What if I'd gone grocery shopping somewhere else or not gone to gym on Tuesday? What if I hadn't given him fish for lunch on Friday? What if we'd checked up on him in the middle of the night? Will he still be with us? What if we'd bought a different house in a different suburb? Would this unknown thing that took him out have been lurking around there?

I know that the anticipation is often worse than the actual event and often when you're not anticipating something it knocks the wind out and you and takes you by surprise. But this anticipated first is hard - mimicking the end of summer heat, intensely suffocating, pressing down. Breathe. Just breathe. I know that better days always come after the hard ones. Everything passes.

We've survived one measly little year without our beautiful boy. The thought of the rest of our lives without him sometimes seems so unbearable, like a very dark engulfing space of nothingness. And yet we still have so much to live for. Of course, little Mikaela brings us so much joy already - and it's possible for joy to reside alongside grief and I'm so grateful for that. In amidst it all I know it can always be worse.

I was one of those probably-irritating people who told childless friends that I felt so complete and fulfilled and that life only really really began for me once I'd had Jude and I wondered why we had even waited to have kids it was so awesome. So equallly, I guess the death of a child means that a part of us will never be whole again. And we learn to live with that, with our invisible amputation - but some days a bit more limping than usual is inevitable.

Oh I miss you my Noodle-noo.

After a 6 week blur of feeding, burping, nappy-changing, crying, feeding and burping some more, I still can't believe that this beautiful baby girl is mine.

Wow, what a rollercoaster of emotions the past 9 months have been. Sadness, despair, fear, grief, oh so many tears shed. But amidst it all there has been the hope, excitement and anticipation of a new life growing inside of me.

Mikaela Isabella, it's so good to finally meet you, you are perfect and beautiful in every way possible. Thank you for helping to heal our shattered hearts a little bit at a time.