If T.S. Eliot measured out the afternoons with coffee spoons, our time is being measured out according to weeks. It's impossible to think of the months passing without thinking of how far along we are in our pregnancy. We think of time now as in weeks - 12 weeks along, 15 weeks along, 20 weeks along. The months have vanished and the only thing that seems to exist is the number of weeks.
When we first found out, we waited out the weeks until our first appointment where we would have our first ultrasound - and therefore our first images of the little life we started.
Then we waited (and hoped and prayed) until we got through the first three months and into the coveted 2nd trimester; that time where things feel a little safer and a lot more real.
I waited, then, as the weeks ticked by, patiently waiting for the first little sign of a kick. When it happened it felt like another miracle! A little flutter! A tiny little sign of the tiny being nestled safely inside me - wiggling around to let me know that it was there. A baby that I could not see, but could feel, and could already love so very, very deeply.
A couple more weeks passed and we were finally at the 20th week; the half-way mark! We have come half the distance of having our little one in our arms. But also, we hit another milestone: finding out what we were having.
It was hard enough waiting until the 20th week to find out what we were having, that it was impossible to imagine waiting until the delivery room. We had the sonographer seal the gender results in an envelope and we opened it later that morning in a diner....
A BOY! We are having a boy! Tears of joy, a boy!
And with that the abstract dreams that we had of a bundle of joy - the blurry images of a bundle of joy without gender, face or name - have manifested into the solid form of a little boy. A little baby boy, wrapped in blue. Then a toddler boy, teetering on unsteady legs, following his daddy around the house. And sooner than I would like to imagine, a boy that is a young child, walking in much-loved sneakers and carrying a fishing pole over his shoulder. I dare not imagine a young man; for peering that far into the future makes this time feel all too fleeting.
So yes, the 20th week marks the halfway mark. It means that half of our pregnancy journey is behind us. But it almost means that the other half still looms before us. Which is why the fact that there are 20 weeks left has the paradoxical quality of feeling short and long at the same time.
So we'll relish the time we still have in this pregnancy - watching my belly grow, feeling the excitement over the changes and preparing to welcome our little guy into the world - but we'll continue to count down the months and the weeks until there are only days and minutes left until he's here.