It is the end of 2008

and you would be almost 18 months old now, into everything and driving your sisters crazy. Your sisters often ask about what you would be doing, what you would be like and I enjoy telling them what I think you would like doing now and what toys and games you might like.

You were very missed this Christmas, by me, daddy and your sisters - it still feels like you are missing, a gaping hole that cannot be fixed or healed. We had fun and games and laughters but something just wasn't quite right, you weren't there and we miss you beautiful baby boy.

After tomorrow I will no longer be able to say that you died last year. I will now have to say that you died in 2007 or say how long ago you died. It feels like I am moving further away from you and it will take a while to get used to. But you have a huge place in my heart and you always will live there. Your memory will never fade, I will remember those precious few hours with you for the rest of my life. I love you, my amazing brave boy.
xxxxx

as good as it gets?

I've reached a point where I feel like this is as good as it gets - I can function, I can work, I can get out of bed in the morning, I can coo over other babies, I love my children, I love my husband, I love my friends, I can laugh, I can be happy.
But my heart is broken and a piece will always be missing. Throughout a good day an image, a child, a song, a comment, a question, a thought can cause my tears to fall. My boy is everywhere I go. Maybe this is what it will be like forever - life going on but, out of nowhere, something triggers thoughts of my boy and what we have lost. I have always believed in fate, something happening for a reason but I struggle to find the reason why we had to lose our son - he was so wanted and so loved

I can't pretend to be the person I used to be, after you have cradled your dead baby in your arms it would be wrong to be the same person.

My heart also aches with the hurt my girls have experienced - they are both still dealing with their emotions about the brother they briefly met but never saw again. Sometimes I watch my girls playing and I am aware of the overwhelming sense that someone is missing. What would life been like, I wonder, had Jamie lived.

The girls still talk about Jamie often. Lucy was sad yesterday because her brother is dead but she likes to think of him swimming around the world and smiling when we think about him and talk about him. Alice is a little more complicated - she is a much more emotional child and she is still battling with thoughts and worries and new emotions about Jamie and his death, how that makes her feel and how it makes me feel. From a very early age, my girls have learned that doctors can't save everyone and that must be very unsettling. All we can do is continue to allow them to speak about him and to ask all the questions they need to.

We are now approaching our second Christmas without Jamie. I feel a mixture of lost and found, happy and sad. Life is going as well as it can be - my girls are fantastic, I am busy, I have some great friends and the love of a good man but some days I feel so so lost and wonder whether that will ever end. For my girls, I am looking forward to Christmas but I know it will also be emotional and, at times, unbearable.

I would do anything to have my boy back with us again. I have to figure out how to close the gap in my life because some days it just hurts too much. Am I to experience this for the rest of my life? To lose a child has to be the hardest experience in the world because it lasts a lifetime, a wound that never properly heals.

I have to work out how to be happier - I have so much to be happy about but my head won't let me relax and enjoy life.