I am a huge fan of my personal space, I’ll go ahead and make that statement upfront. I am not a fan of being touched by people who I do not know. I knew going into this pregnancy that I should expect to have my personal space violated a little bit. I prepared myself mentally to be nice to people. Everybody seems to love a pregnant lady. They want to ask you when the baby is due, how you are feeling, is a boy or a girl. You don’t realize how tired you will get answering these questions over and over and over again every day. But I’ve done good, I’ve remained polite.

I managed to escape most of the tummy touching until now. It seems like in this third trimester my belly has a touch me sign on it. Of course I cannot see the sign, the one I see says back off! Unfortunately I appear to be the only one who can see the second sign.

I had a particularly horrifying experience last week at work. Most everyone who knows me, knows that I work at the same place as my hubby. Makes it very nice for carpooling (and free drop off at the door service!). Last Friday, while waiting on the first floor for hubby to go home, my personal space was violated in a big way. A little background story on this:

There is this girl who works on the third floor. I do not know her or what her name is. She apparently is really excited about my pregnancy. She has to rub my tummy every time she passes by. Now I worked very hard the first couple of times to be polite and just accept that it happens and move on. But I think somehow in her head it’s like rubbing a buddha belly statue or something for luck. Because she continues to do this every time. I finally a couple of weeks ago asked her if I was not pregnant would she be touching my belly, to which the responded no while giving me a funny look. So I told her “then don’t do it now.”

Now one would think that would have been enough to get the message through, right? Wrong! She was at it again last Friday. Only this time I had not been paying attention, I was watching the elevators for hubby. The next thing I know she is rubbing my belly, and her face is right up against it and she is talking loudly saying hi to the baby! Needless to say this behavior not only horrified me, but it startled me as well. Who in their right mind would do that to someone you do not know?! I felt violated and very upset.

Now I’m afraid to go to the first floor. I am trying things like altering where I normally stand to wait. Hopefully this will work and I won’t be in her path out the door. Otherwise we may have an altercation on our hands, or I may have to take out a restraining order, not sure which will happen. Either way I can most definitely say that this pregnancy has been full of interesting experiences!