Bella is almost a month old...

...and she is here and well! And I've been sustaining her with my mama milk alone. And she's still here.

I know that sounds a bit crazy, probably, to anyone who's never lost a child - who might think at the very worst, a child might not thrive on their food but, would then be put on formula (or whatever) and be fine. For those of us who've been through infant loss however - and those of us who have not, but who can sympathize nonetheless - actually keeping a child alive is an enormous "thing."

So I am not a complete failure as a mother. Obviously in many ways, that does surprise me. Once one has lost a baby, one wonders if one's body can actually sustain life in any way at all or if one will consistently kill everything. So morbid, sure, but at the end of the day it's true. After I lost Josie I thought, in the smallest part of the back of my mind that maybe...just maybe, I'd been marked for death.

Imagine the relief when Bella's head emerged - the surreal, mixed with relief. I felt like I was in a Quentin Tarantino movie in terms of the oddness of the situation and the joy, mixed in. If you've ever seen "Kill Bill 2" - think of the ending to the movie, which is bittersweet, but happy in a way - well, that's how it felt at the moment Bella's head emerged, alive, vaginally, from me. The death of Josie took the joy and sucked it into a big vortex. The birth of Isobella injected the joy back into my life with the curious force of the adrenaline syringe being pushed into Uma Thurman's chest in "Pulp Fiction."

Enough with the film references. In the end, all I'm saying is that life is not "shit" or "a bitch" in the end. Once you've been through a bit of real, gritty life, you've really got to stand back with your hands on your hips and say: "you know what? Life is just...very strange." Coincidences, determination, terrible timing, wonderful timing and maybe a bit of fate thrown in here and there, and you have this amazing, changing thing called life, in a nutshell. Can you qualify life? Define it? Well I suppose so, sure: life is life. It's just "there" - you've got to make the right decisions and prolong it as much as possible, love as much as possible and let go of the fear, and that's about it really.

Now here I am with my little muffin, a month later (almost) and she's chubby, here, cute and just about starting to really smile on a regular basis. The little baby I've been feeding only God knows how many times a day actually burst into laughter in her sleep two days ago in the morning. She laughed for goodness sakes. She's growing, learning, changing and life seems to amuse her. Isn't that wonderful?

Not only is she alive, but she clearly likes being alive. I love that she has an opinion!

With that, I will leave you with a few pictures we took of her and I on Friday - I really feel compelled to show off her chubbiness to the rest of the world...

Tons of love to you all!