What time is it?

It's a bit unsettling when the expiration date on the milk in your refrigerator matches your due date. Will you even get to finish the milk?

When you're pregnant, time is one of the many things that no longer cooperates with you. You learn that the timeframe of 40 weeks isn't connected to reality in any way. In fact, most pregnancies are much longer than 40 weeks, lasting decades or more. Here's how I figure:

You buy a pregnancy test. On the way home, several major holidays come and go. You take the test, and another month passes before you see that second pink line. The next 8 months (give or take) stretch to infinity. Google searches around this time focus on pregnancy symptoms: "Queasy, pregnant," "Miserable, pregnant," and finally "Does the nausea ever end, pregnant."

The idea of being pregnant begins to sink in. For a few panicked moments you're trying to click the undo button, only to realize that blessed little arrow exists only in your word-processing program. The next couple of days pass before you've even had breakfast. With Google's help, you begin trying to calculate just when you may give birth so you have an optimal amount of warning.

You've scheduled your first doctor visit for the end of the month (you're at the beginning) and are told you'll get an ultrasound. When your baby reaches his/her first birthday, you finally head in for your appointment and get to see the little bean. Google begins to reveal more ways you can expect to be miserable for the next 7 months, as well as cute bedding choices for both boys and girls.

Now you just have to make it through week 12, so that your hazardous first trimester is over. As you can't really shop, you can only half-heartedly think about names, and you're too queasy and exhausted to leave the couch, each day is like a thousand years. Google, and everyone you meet on the street, tells you to try soda crackers or ginger.

Yay, week 13! The next few weeks are some of the only ones that feel even close to normal, that is if you're not still queasy. A couple Google searches for most trendy baby names help you rule out  Aiden and Addison.

At your week-16 appointment, you schedule your week-20 ultrasound. Time goes backwards until the night before when you're so freaked that you no longer exist within time and have transferred to your own universe where dimensions are so weird I can't even describe them with words other than "purple" and "floaty." Google is busy sending you ultrasound pictures you can pore over as you earn an honorary degree in ultrasonography.

After the ultrasound, you once again relax for a few weeks. It helps that you can finally shop and plan. You're simply excited, so time slows down in close correlation to the way it feels leading up to Christmas when you're a kid (or just someone who really likes Christmas). You look to Google for help with planning your nursery.

You hit week 30. Or rather, it hits you like a ton of bricks. All of a sudden, you can count your remaining weekends on two hands. You're not making as many future plans as you were. And you are beginning to see just how much stuff you have to get done. What's more, you realize that you really need to get it all done before week 37 or 38, because Baby could come anytime after that. Time rolls along at a pretty good clip the next few weeks, almost as it does when you're on a really nice vacation and will return to a not-so-nice job. Google lets you know that you should be vigilant about any signs of preterm labor or pre-eclampsia.

A few weeks later (around week 37, for me), you realize you're growing slightly more uncomfortable. You'd like an actual night of sleep again (realizing full well you won't get one for months or years after the baby comes but the sooner you start, the sooner you sleep), and your toenails could use a good clipping. You're ready to be done. Time responds by stopping, so that week 37 lasts through the end of your pregnancy and doesn't become week 38 until the next leap year. You run to Google once an hour for information on "is this labor?"

Nearing week 39, I'm neither wildly impatient nor intensely freaked, believe it or not, making time feel like it's marching on at a relatively steady, normal pace. I am, however, at the point at which I would rather go into labor than, say, attend a freelance meeting or sweep the floor (nesting seems to have been a week 36-37 thing, unfortunately). Labor would simply be more convenient. Google searches are telling me that my backache could mean I'll go into labor in the next 2-3 weeks. No kidding! Google is losing its credibility.

I've gotten good at waiting, apparently. Pregnancy must be nature's way of honing your patience. The true test will begin within 2-3 weeks.

[Matt's favorite comment throughout my pregnancy has been, by the way, "I'll sure be glad when all this is over!" Fortunately, he says it with a smile.]