One of the bestestest things about being one of the oldest cousins in a whole damn tribe is that I got to feel the cousins move while they were inside my aunts. But it was always by invitation.
SiL didn’t even like it when her husband wanted to feel the baby kick (heck, she’d be spitting hellfire and damnation… it was the period when she’d found out it was going to be a boy), so Mom and me never asked. And definitely never touched.
I suspect that we are talking about the range of preschools from warehousing your kids in daycare to small scale, small class sized instructional schools that have programs in French. Some kids are in daycare a long time (and then its especially important to find one that isn’t going to just warehouse your kid).
I don’t think I was ever touched when pregnant - I give off the “don’t touch” aura. However, I did get the complete strangers advice on the importance of breastfeeding and the evils of formula frequently - which was annoying since I had an adopted kid at home on formula - the combination of pregnancy hormones and new mommy guilt did not make that a welcome experience.
It does get better - but not unti they are toddlers and you look like you will hand them over to anyone who will be helpful. People are touchy when they are newborns and full of useless advice. And they are very quick to tell you how fast their kid walked (correct response to anyone who brags about their kid walking before yours “oh, I’m so sorry, they grow up so fast as it is, to have an early walker turn your baby into a toddler must have been heartbreaking” for potty training “I sort of figure no one moves into the dorm with a box of Huggies - he’ll figure it out”)
Remember kindergarten? Coloring in the lines, cutting, using glue, learning how to take turns, stand in line, eat your snack before snack time was over, holding your pee until bathroom break, sitting in a group without poking each other or wandering away, learning colors and counting and letters and preliminary reading? Yeah, all that’s in preschool now. Some preschools are doing all that and adding in map skills, “daily living skills” (like zippers, buttons, tying shoelaces, knowing your address and phone number and how to use a phone and making simple snacks), Spanish, ESL, calendar skills, time telling (usually digital, sometimes analog) and other stuff as well.
While it’s still possible to jump right in to kindergarten, it’s a lot harder than it used to be. There’s a lot of not just socialization but other skills to get caught up on.
By the end of kindergarten, they’re not only reading Dr. Suess books, they’re doing addition. Kindergarten now is what first grade was when I was a kid.
Just stop that! You’re making me sniffle! And my youngest “baby” is 30.
Mr. Lissar has made me promise that I will smack anyone who touches me without permission. It wasn’t a difficult promise to extract. I pity the idiot who touches me without permission when he’s there- they’ll be having a little chat with a large, surly (thanks Rysdad) and extremely protective man.
I suppose I was speaking mostly of parents who use daycare and pre-school. At my program, our time spent with kids was about 15 hrs./week preschool, and 25 hrs./week daycare. About 25% of pre-schoolers (which for us was 3-4 yr.-olds) would spend 30hrs./week with us. With two professional parents, it isn’t uncommon for Mom and Dad to get about 30 hrs. of time with the kiddos per week.
But even if it’s just half the amount of time a parent gets, that’s still really significant.
This is so completely alien to me that I cannot wrap my head around it. I am not mocking you, AuntBeast, I am just baffled. You would rather your daughter was essentially hypothetical, instead of here, present and learning, growing every day? To not cry or get hurt is to not live.
To me, the joy of parenthood is the journey of growth on the child’s part and the parent’s. There is no going back. Why would you want to? Sometimes I miss the toddler kisses or the insane sweetness that a 7 year old boy can have, but overall, the best age is the one they’re in right now: 17, 15, and 9. Next year will be next year’s best age and so on and so on…
I was never comfortable pregnant; I hated the attention, the unasked for advice, the ridiculous old wive’s tales, minute examination of my nutritional intake, the lame jokes about pickles and ice cream, the lewd remarks about how and when and why I got pregnant, and the opposite: the idolization of me so that I wasn’t allowed to open a car door or go out alone etc. I look back now and am amazed I did it three times.
Some women absolutely love to be pregnant. Perhaps that’s it. 
Sorry for the invasion of your personal space. Sorry to say that unless you are going to get physical and actually restrain some people, there’s going to be some touching that you don’t dodge fast enough. My wife just gave birth to our second child, and still had people that would randomly touch her during pregnancy.
While I agree that you shouldn’t stress about much before the child comes, if you’re planning on some type of day-care, you really do need to get them enrolled now. We put ourselves on the list for daycare a year before our child was born. We knew we were going to be trying over the summer, so signed her up. The waiting list was something like 10 months for the newborn rooms.
I wish I could tell you that your discomfort would get better, but in all honesty it won’t…it’ll just get worse as you get closer. But you know what? It will end. No matter what, you will have that baby outside you instead of inside you. No stopping that process. So just get through it, and enjoy your baby once you can hold him in your arms, rather than trying to get his foot out from under your ribs.
Good Luck!
My eldest sister, never known for her pacific nature, took to carrying a fork with her while she was pregnant.
Every time someone touched her belly without asking first, she stabbed them in the arm with her fork.
Her pregnancy was fairly high-risk, and she decided that it was less risky for her to poke assholes* in the arm than to try and dodge while very pregnant. Her balance is crappy when she’s not packing 15 pounds of oddly-distributed weight in an awkward location - and a fall might have triggered a miscarraige. Plus, she wasn’t fond of being fondled by total strangers.
To her credit, she did wear a T-shirt that said “Don’t touch me, I’m armed” After the first couple of people got a good poking, word got around.
*Her contention was that anyone who fondled a woman without first obtaining permission was an asshole. Possibly a well-meaning one, but feeling up people without permission is an asshole manuever.
Exactly. They may mean well, and most do, but the pregnant woman is not their personal icon.
What is it with this belly-touching-by-strangers thing? Is it really universal? Why would anyone do it? When my wife was pregnant, I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen to her (or at least, she didn’t tell me about it).
If someone reaches for your pregnant belly, reach for their bellies and ask when they’re due.
Does this seem batshit crazy to anyone else but me? An appropriate response to being touched on the stomach is to stab someone with a sharp metal utensil? What did she do to people who tapped her on the shoulder to ask for directions or to let her know she had toilet paper on her shoe?
I had him inside the sling so no one could see him - and you pretty much had to open it up to see him. I’d wear him on most of our shopping trips, and I had several cashiers comment to me “I didn’t even know you had a baby in there!”. Some people did notice, but didn’t try to stick their hands in there. :eek:
I wouldn’t have been opposed to people just wanting to wiggle his toes or touch his hands or whatever - he’s always loved people - but it was the people who would lean over and breathe right in his face (like the woman with the cigarette breath at Wal-Mart one day). One of my friends had someone come up and put their hands in her ONE WEEK OLD BABY’S MOUTH. That was something that seriously made me nervous.
Granted, I’m not going to hand him over to a stranger to hold, but I have no problem with people tweaking his feet or clapping his hands together - it’s the ones who don’t know boundaries that bother me.
It never happened to me either. Maybe I just have the kind of face that says, “I’m packing a fork, so back off.”
I’m not sure I ever heard of it before reading this thread. But everyone here is talking like it’s a common occurance.
Ask her – you might be surprised.
I remember the belly touching thing happening to me and I frequently got very annoyed. (almost 21 years ago) Finally I started touching back. They’d lay a hand on my belly or pat it and I’d do the same to their tummy, or attempt to. You never saw people jump back so fast.
I only did it a couple of times, both times with male co-workers with whom I was only slightly acquainted, they were shocked that I’d actually touched them.
I was huge when pregnant and always figured that my belly had somehow entered the public domain.
This reminds me of something else people do while you’re pregnant - comment on your size. Shockingly enough, no one but my mom did that, and she did it pretty rudely. “My God, you’re enormous! Huge! I can’t believe how big you are! You are just sooooo big.” (I should cut her just a little slack since she had had about four glasses of wine and two cocktails when she said that. I’m still impressed she was standing up and capable of speech.)
It still kills me when I hear other people do that to pregnant women, particularly ones they don’t even know. You wouldn’t walk up to someone who was overweight and go on and on about how large they were - how is it ok to say something like that to a pregnant woman?
I’ve seen it a lot and it never fails to shock me. My best friend is due this month and a couple of weeks ago she and I were out shopping together. Everywhere we went people were trying to touch her belly and asking tons of questions about the pregnancy, the sex of the baby, when she was due, etc. By the end of the day it was driving me nuts; I don’t know how she deals with it every day. The touching is the worst though. I wouldn’t dream of touching her pregnant belly without asking/being asked and she’s my best friend. I can’t imagine why other people think they should do it.