Twelve

Twelve weeks ago, I was in a hospital rocking chair, knitting, wondering what my baby would look like, pausing to breathe through the contractions as they came. I was in a bathtub, pressing my feet against the jets to take my mind off the pain. I was in a bed, with Velcro straps around my enormous, itchy belly, huffing and pushing and thinking that hey, this part isn't so bad after all.

Twelve weeks before that, I was 28 weeks pregnant. I was counting the months, the weeks, the days until I could be done with pregnancy. I was impatient, thinking twelve weeks seemed like a century, a lifetime, an eternity. And now, here we are at twelve again, and this time, twelve weeks seems like a flash, a blink, a microsecond.

I took a breath and pushed out a baby. I took another and he's twelve weeks old. He smiles. He laughs. He discovers that he controls his own voice and chats with the cashier at the supermarket. The cashier tells me about her grandson who is twelve months old, who is walking, who just had his first encounter with a bee. I hold my breath to slow down time.

I don't think it works.