Dear Cindy – Stop Touching my Belly!

I'm six months pregnant, and I'm tired of people touching me! I work in a long-term care facility for seniors, and every time I see a patient, they have to pat me on the belly. At first I didn't mind, particularly because I realize a lot of my patients don't get to see their families, and some of them are really starved for human contact. But after two months of this, it's really starting to bother me. (And of course, I'm starting to feel guilty and mean-spirited.) What do I do?

Sincerely,

Tired Mom-to-Be

One of our coworkers is pregnant, and we thought we'd conduct an experiment wherein we would repeatedly walk up to her and touch her stomach, and watch how her reactions changed as the days went by. But knowing her as we do, we decided we didn't want to risk it.

You're in a pickle. While it's an invasion of your person, you know that expectant mothers always have family, friends, coworkers, and strangers touching their bellies at some time or another. You also know that you opened the floodgates by letting them touch you in the first place. And as you said, the poor folks are lonely.

In hindsight, you know that next time you'll say something like, "Actually, I'm not pregnant, I'm just getting fat."

In the meantime, your only options are to put up with it or ask them to stop. If you ask them to stop, even if you can come up with an excuse they might buy (I don't know, perhaps that your increasing girth has made your skin particularly sensitive to the touch?), it will probably hurt their feelings, and you'll find yourself with a lot of disappointed foster-grannies and foster-granddads on your hands.

So decide which bothers you more, loving touches of lonely seniors, or …