And now we're at 15 / This wait is hard...

Fifteen months since our file went to China. Who would have thunk it? I certainly thought we would have been and returned by now, and would be getting ready for our first Christmas with Baby Girl.

This wait is hard.

I am finding it harder and harder to go to shopping centres again. When we were doing IVF it took all of my strength to go to the local shopping centre - as it was almost inevitable I would bump into an old school friend who would ask the dreaded question "so when are you two going to have children." When we moved (almost) interstate, not bumping into people at shopping centres was a great relief. The dread is no longer bumping into old school friends, but rather being an observer to 'happy families'.

My latest obsession (when I actually do go to a shopping centre) is looking at little boys, who have blondish, slightly curly hair and green/blue eyes, and wondering, if all had gone to plan and if we had a little boy, would he look like that? In my dreams of having children - the picture was never of me putting pig-tails in a little girl's hair. It was always of seeing Shane playing football with a little boy.

As the wait gets longer and longer for our first child, the old demons of failure, desperation and utter sadness also have time to haunt me again. I don't want to go back to that dark, dark place I was in during IVF, but occasionally I find myself so overwhelmed with grief. Grief for my lost dreams, Shane's lost dreams, our lost dreams.

I do think that (some) people assume that because we are now adopting, the pain, sadness and grief of years of infertility, IVF and pregnancy loss has magically disappeared. For me, not only has it not disappeared, I am still reminded, in some way, every single day of what we don't have, what we have lost, and what we so, so want. Today I couldn't buy the newspaper, as the headline story on the front page was "Triple the fun as city goes baby crazy" (which referred to a story of a woman giving birth to triplets). Who would have thought buying the Saturday paper could be so traumatic?

Don't get me wrong, we are both over the moon about eventually meeting our daughter who will be born half a world away - she is already the absolute love of our lives. And now we are on this path, know this is the way it was always meant to be. But that doesn't make the pain of loss any less.

This wait is hard...

So close... kinda!

So we both have a long day at work, and Shane went up to the house site straight from work to jack-hammer some pier-holes for the shed, so by the time we both got home, we were not in the mood for cooking and decided to go to the pub for dinner (and a beer or two).

Now I've mentioned before - we live in a small Australian country town... the 'blink and you'll miss it' sized country town... and our pub is a typical Aussie country pub that's operated since 1872, and is full of great Aussie characters and great Aussie beer... and to this day still looks like this:

The great thing about living in a small country town is the 'bush-telegraph' - where stories of village life, and sometimes villagers themselves get passed along from one person to the next. Sometimes the Bush Telegraph can rival RQ... but not in this case.

So imagine our surprise when we got to the pub, to be told by one of the locals - our friend - LP - that the village had a very important visitor today...

None other than China's President - Hu Jintao was in our village. Seriously. Here. IN OUR VILLAGE. Too cool huh? Of course it was a stop off on his way to Sydney to participate in APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation).

Don't believe me? You can read about it here. Apparently he came to visit a working sheep station near the border of the ACT and NSW, where he watched a sheep dog demonstration at a nearby Bywong property. Then came and had lunch at 'Grazing' - our village's award winning restaurant.

Like I said... so close.... Kinda... It was just a nice feeling - even if by 6 (or probably 100) degrees of separation - there was - for an instance - a close connection to China - here at home.