Dear Prudie Sucks

Dear Prudie,
I am thrilled to be expecting my first child and have just started to really show. I have been fortunate to not have experienced any morning sickness, but have developed a slightly irritable personality for the first time in my life. I can rein it in most of the time. However, I face one increasingly recurring problem that causes me to be instinctively rude almost immediately. I can't stand people, especially mere acquaintances, touching my stomach without invitation. The only person I like rubbing my belly is my sweet husband. I like people, just not having their hands all over me. I don't chop off fingers, but I do jump back and remove the offending hands and tell them not to touch. This results in aghast faces, but I think it's awful for people to assume they can touch a pregnant woman's belly at will and expect it to be welcome. As I still have months to go, I just need some suggestions on how to politely tell people that I am not the Pillsbury Doughgirl. Also, can I get a plug in here for a public service announcement letting people know that they should always ask before reaching for a pregnant belly?

—Hands Off, Please

Dear Hands,
Here's your announcement, and of course, no one should be touched if they don't want to be. Having said that, I have a big but about big bellies. Seeing a woman bursting with new life is so lovely that it can be an almost uncontrollable impulse to pat her belly. I remember feeling really warm toward the (almost exclusively) female hands that reached out to touch my growing baby. The touch was always accompanied by good wishes or another woman's memory of her own pregnancy. Can you try to think of these well-meaning hands as a communion that's been going on since humans became human? When you remove a hand (and isn't it rare for the touch to last more than a moment?) as if it is a dead carp, you certainly get your message across. But if you could relax about this, you will find it is truly a self-limiting problem. In a few months your belly will be yours again. But you should prepare yourself for the time when everyone who patted your stomach is going to want to hold your irresistible baby.

—Prudie

OK, here's the thing. Dear Prudie's take on the situation is that your should grin and bear it while people put their grimy, only god knows where they've been hands all over your nice pregnant belly. Not only should you grin and bear it, but you should relax, because this "communion" of humans is going on.

Two words. FUCK THAT. Here's what I think. I like to touch pregnant bellies. However, I ask before I start to molest so poor mother to be, because she's already got enough shit going on, and who am I to physically invade her space, when she's already hosting another being? I think that Dear Prudie should have instead recommended that this woman slap every person who touches her without asking across the face. We'll call it aversion therapy. As a matter of fact, if all pregnant women started doing this, we would probably be doing the world a favor.