Touchy

Good lord, when did it become ok to touch someone else's body? Just reach out and touch them?

I got touched so often this weekend, I feel like my stomach is now community property. No longer belonging to me.

Granted, it is with good intentions. But geez! It's not all baby, some of that is my leftover IVF/DL/FET fat. So random people are rubbing my fat. Nice.

We had a party at my brother/SIL's house on Saturday, where the news of "It's a girl!" spread like wildfire. It was actually all that anyone wanted to talk to me about. Have I become that one-dimensional? All I can talk about is babies? I kept thinking how I know there are women at this party with IF woes (some who I know about, I'm sure others that I don't) and how me being pregnant must be hard for them. It hurt me to think about, and remembering clearly being on the other side. But everyone else kept bringing up the baby thing, so it was forever talked about. So I'm sorry, people-at-the-party for all the baby-talk. Trust me, I wanted to talk about the Cubs (well, not really, they are terrible, but you know what I mean!).

And even more insane was a wedding of one of Mr. P's young (gosh, they seem so young to me! but they are like mid-20s I guess) cousin. So a huge Irish/Italian wedding. And this was the first time I've seen this side of his family since getting pregnant. Ooooh boy, I was touched. By everyone. People I'm not really sure who they were. Touching me. Mr. P at one point said we should charge a dollar for every belly touch, we'd be rich already. Seriously, I felt a bit violated. But what can you do? They all mean well. I know this. But again, it just seemed excessive, and I kept thinking there was someone out there who was hurt by seeing me.

It is a strange place, being the person I used to shoot eye-daggers at. And while I tried to keep things low-key, the world does not allow this. The majority of the world, the fertile world, are baby-crazy. They don't get that some of us have struggled.

Mr. P's mom (who could be the most baby-crazy of them all, we are her only shot at grandkids, and she is surrounded by her gazillion nephews and nieces) made some comment about a biblical passage she read at the wedding, of the man existing because of the bones given to him by a women (or something like that, don't ask the atheist to understand) and she gestured to my belly and said, "Like you, little baby, the combination of the man and woman" and Mr. P and I both laughed and said, "Yeah, that, and several doctors, a lot of science, and even more money!"

I guess we can still be a little touchy about this ourselves.