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.

Last night I dreamed that I was in the middle of a shoot and needed to change my lens. When I leaned down to my camera bag, I saw that the fronts of all my lenses had been smashed and there were chunks of glass scattered in my bag. I hadn't seen what caused it, it just was and I couldn't understand what had happened. Surely I would have seen or heard something or someone cause that? But no, it just was. It didn't occur to me in the dream to cancel the shoot - I realised that I was going to get some very different images from the session.

Since that awful morning our whole World was shattered, it's been impossible to look at life in the same sharp, structured way. But often sharpness and structure are quite boring and dull and uninspiring - there is beauty in depth and layers; and pain brings a perspective of what is truly important in life.

I've been loving my Holga - it's unpredictable, often blurry and multi-layered. Sometimes when you're not sure of the bigger view, it's comforting to find beauty in the abstract.

(For photographers who might be interested, these are all cross-processed slide film, straight out of camera)

So many well-meaning people have said to us in sympathy: 'Wow, this is a very, very, VERY long road you guys are on'.

To a newly-grieving person, these words are nothing short of terrifying - a day is torturous to get through and if that's only a small segment of this very long road, then how the hell do you manage to get through the rest of the journey without losing the will to live?

But then I thought about this a little bit and realised that Simon and I know a lot about going on very, very long and bad roads after having driven back to Cape Town from London in a non-air-conditioned Landcruiser. I'm not sure if this road of grief we're on is supposed to be on foot, bicycle or a 4x4 but the last one is the one I can relate to.

So, if I think back to our trip nearly 4 years ago...

'Today I will be unafraid. I will enjoy what is beautiful, and believe as I give to the world, so the world will give to me'

So many things have shifted in our New World. After reading this quote online the other day, I realised that a shift in my beliefs is one of the most fundamental changes that has taken place. This is a beautiful quote and one that I would have easily identified with in the past but now I know otherwise - the world does not always give you what your 'deserve'.

After witnessing cancer consume my beautiful mother when I was 22, I still naively believed in the goodness  and abundance of Life – that to a large extent, you got out of Life what you put into it. Kharma, reaping what you sow.. whatever you want to call it. But losing a child so suddenly makes you realise that you have very little control over what your days will hold, whether your day will include tragedy or joy or if your whole life journey is re-directed on a course you really don't want to be on. Sometimes life just screws you over, no matter what you do. Whether you're good or bad, do the 'right' things or not, if you spend every day in gratitude for what you have or moan incessantly about your life... it doesn't matter. Bad things happen, they can happen to anyone and just because you've experienced bad things before doesn't mean that they won't happen again - there is no 'tragedy quota' per person.

When Simon and I travelled down Africa, we were walking on a stunning section of beach in Kenya when 3 men ran down the dunes, threatened us with pangas and demanded we give them our backpack and then scattered off into the distance. I wasn't that upset about the backpack,  but from then on, I constantly imagined panga-laden men lurking around every corner and I was most irritated that they had changed my perception of the world and I could no longer enjoy our trip in the same carefree way that I had before.

This time, our loss is substantially more valuable than a backpack of possessions, but aside from desperately longing for to hold my beautiful boy again, I think this loss of faith in the goodness and abundance in life is a biggest other loss for me. Will I ever be truly carefree and blissfully ignorant again? Will I be able to not think of a deadly virus lurking around with our future children? Probably not. But I can still appreciate everything I have right now in a much bigger way, right at this moment and hope for better things. And when the better things come I will treasure them that extra bit more and with a realisation of what really matters. I will rub my belly in appreciation as it grows and be truly grateful for my health and fertility, I will cuddle Simon that extra little bit and be thankful for hope -even if to hope is to risk pain.

Today I may be a little more fearful than I was before but I will try and enjoy what is still beautiful and hope with all my heart that the world has good things to give to me.

I mean isn't this just a face that reflects the goodness and abundance of life? Sunshine, grass, dirt and sunscreen, happy times...

For seventy-three days we have survived. We have endured. We have limped along through our Changed World with our invisible amputation, biding the Passage of Time. We wake up in the same room, work in the same places, drive the same roads, see the same friends, but we are no longer the same people and the world for us is not the same.

On the morning of our changed lives, I remember numbly saying to someone that it would be impossible for me not to be a bitter and twisted after what we had been subjected to. It's been a relief to discover that bitterness has not been a side effect of this, I don't feel a hint of bitterness towards other people's perfect lives. I do wonder though - will we really be truly truly happy ever again? That really deep down happiness and contentment that fills your soul? I had written in my journal a few days before Jude's death about how deeply grateful, content and fulfilled I felt and somehow that now feels like somebody else's life. I know that I still have so much to be grateful for but sometimes it's hard to realise.

What I am grateful for is that the intense grief has changed from beating ourselves up and feeling like we could have done something into some kind of acceptance and integrating this horrific event into our lifestory. I am intensely grateful that I have an amazing husband to relate to and to cry and identify with and to remember together. I am grateful that I have another chance at being a mom with a new life growing inside me.

Now that the wedding season is winding down I've had some time to go through my personal photos and remember. These were taken in February a few weeks before he died. Some of my imported albums arrived in a box which Jude merrily amused himself with for ages. Simon came home and it looked like Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere and I cursed myself for having freely let him make a mess as it took just as long to clean up the whole of the lounge floor.  Now I would do it all over again.

My most precious Judle-Noodle

I remember bringing you home from the hospital, sitting on my couch, crying tears of happiness at your arrival into our lives. You had come early and there was no one to help me out, but I knew that we would be fine. We were home and you were mine.

I watched with pride as you gurgled and grew into a stocky, gorgeous boy who embraced every moment to the full, pudgy hands exploring everything, never missing a beat. You loved everyone around you with random hugs and lap visits and you charmed your way into random people's hearts. I wondered how I could have been so lucky to get such a happy, loving, friendly child.

I could not believe that life could be so cruel when I found you cold and lifeless in your cot last Saturday morning. The autopsy revealed that you had a random reaction to a viral infection which caused myocarditis which pretty much feels like a lightning bolt.

The gaping hole you have left in our hearts is unbearable. Life will never ever be the same without your bright blue eyes, contagious laugh and unending enthusiam for anything and everything. The journey from you wriggling in my belly to clinging onto my hips has been the most fulfilling and amazing one and I will never be the same again.

On a practical note to my clients - I will be taking a few weeks break from family and baby shoots as it's all a bit raw at the moment but will be back in action soon!

There are a few more images of Jude on my other site from his very short life:

Not sure if this is a love or hate reaction...