Can't you read?

Did my belly puncture my carefully crafted personal body space bubble? What is it about a gravid belly (eeww, gravid- I hate that word. What am I, a preying mantis?) that invites random people I don’t know to touch it?

My geriatrics rotation was the worst for this, and the worst offenders of all were the nurses. One nurse even came after me in the elevator as the doors were closing. She reached her hands in, grabbed at my belly, and exclaimed, “Wow! Your belly’s really hard! It must be almost time!” Then she withdrew her hands, stepped back, and the elevator doors closed before I had time to react. What the hell??? I used to boast that if anyone touches my belly without asking, I’d touch hers back and see how she likes it. Now I just stand there, honestly kind of shocked that adults actually do this in real life. There really are people (and all of them are women) who go around grabbing at pregos’ bellies and remarking “you must be ready to pop!” and “that baby must be a girl/boy because you’re carrying high/low!”

This month on internal medicine nobody grabs my belly, thank goodness! Instead, random people in elevators are constantly observing sagely that “there must be something in the water” because of all the pregnant nurses and residents they are seeing lately. Whatever. I much prefer that to assault and battery.