At Least Buy Me a Drink First

The weird and, let's face it, annoying part of being pregnant is that suddenly a woman's body is public property. Everyone is always up in your business and strangers think it's totally okay to touch your stomach. Now, I don't mind too much when people touch me if I know them. Husband? He better like touching my stomach or he's gonna get punched. Friends? Naturally. Former co-workers? Sure, I guess. My baristas at Borders? Well, I'm pretty attached to them since they are the providers of caffeine; so, if they really wanted to. Random strangers in the mall? Absolutely not. Fortunately this only happened once and, at least, she only rubbed my arm and said how good I looked and didn't touch my stomach but still. Not. Okay.

Also. Random people need to stop asking me when I'm due. I get one of two responses when I tell them. "You look so small still." Oh really. Try carting around 30 extra pounds all of which is centered in one small part of the body on top of my pre-existing back problems and sciatica and then tell me I look small. The other, more surprising one is, "Are you sure there is only one in there?" Yeah. Way to make a pregnant woman feel good about herself. Fortunately, this only happens when I'm wearing my sweatpants which do nothing to hide my enormous belly unlike all my other pants which have this weird slimming effect. Hmmm. Maybe I should stop wearing sweatpants in public.

Yeah right.

And then there are the doctors. Warning: I'm about to talk about my OB appointments. If you are in any way squeamish about this or just don't want to know: stop reading right now.

I go to a group practice. This means that there are five or six doctors who I see on a rotating basis. As nice as it would be to only see one doctor and build some sort of relationship with them, it would be very unlikely that they would be the one to deliver baby. One person cannot be in Labor & Delivery 24 hours a day and I would at least like to know who the doctor is when I deliver. Up until last week, I had met all but one of them. And wouldn't you know it, I have entered the phase of them checking my cervix every time I'm there. Hoo boy. Is that fun or what? So, this was the first time I was meeting this doctor and after about five minutes its like, okay, now I'm going to check out your lady parts. Umm. Hi. Shouldn't you at least buy me a drink first? And apparently, when I'm in labor, there will be random nurses who will be doing the same thing. Seeing as I'm sharing the same body with another living being, can my lady bits at least be somewhat off limits? I guess that would make delivery somewhat more difficult.

Just two more weeks...