Hi ladies,

How do you handle unwanted belly touching? I have issues with anxiety and it makes me so very uncomfortable when family touches me. My close family doesn’t really bother me but I literally have anxiety about even going to family gatherings because of this.

When I was about 10 weeks literally everyone touched my stomach at a birthday party and I was not showing at ALL I didn’t say anything this day but I just wanted to go crawl in a hole and hide. This anxiety caused me to skip my husbands big family gathering for Christmas, thankfully I have an amazing and super understanding husband. The only thing he has said is my anxiety over this is probably going to make family events awkward until the baby is born. And he is right. So idk if I am supposed to endure this touching and horrid anxiety or how I can tell everyone in a nice way to back off. I do not like making people feel bad but I cannot stand this.

I have an aunt who told me at thanksgiving, “you need to get used to it because I am a toucher.” At our family Christmas she announced loudly for everyone to hear, “Ok, I hope you are ready for me to touch your belly. Come here.” I didn’t let her and told her she was invading my personal space and I kept a big distance between me and her but this literally brought up a huge discussion about why I felt that way and well my baby shower would be super awkward because everyone will want to touch.

Fast forward to today and every time I think about how she acted I get very upset and now I am literally dreading my baby shower because of the anticipated unwanted touching. How do you ladies handle this?