Empathy Belly: Discover the Feelings, Aches and Hassles of Being a Pregnant Teenager

JOURNAL FOR EMPATHY BELLY:

FRIDAY, NOV. 6, 1998

Dear Diary,

Well I got the empathy belt today at school. Oh boy has the last 11 hours been hard on me. I put it on about 3:00 p.m. today after school with Lacey's help. After we got it on me she drove me to my work place to see if I still had to work. When we got there I found out that pregnant people, most of the time get treated better. What I'm talking about is when we got there and were going into the building I tried to hold the door open for a man but he insisted that I go first. I was thinking that it was because of my being pregnant so after a while I was like, hey, I'm not really pregnant and lifted up my shirt. Oh my gosh, he was just so willing to go on through with me holding the door then. Go figure huh?

I also figured out that if you only work at your job every weekend and on some Fridays not all of your co-workers pay good attention to you. Because after I left and went home to put on my uniform, which I looked quite different in and was not easy to put on,. I went to work and people were acting so funny (weird)! I say this because I had people there that had just seen me the weekend before, or the one before that, and they actually thought I was pregnant. I am so serious, people coming into work all night look at me and get all big eyed, doing double takes or asking me how far along I was. Also, some were saying , "I didn't know you were pregnant". Oh my gosh, I even had one person not believe me when I told her I was NOT pregnant. I constantly had people in the drive thru asking how far along I was or just being really nice to me. I even had one lady drive through that had known me since I was really young through church... Well ,she hadn't seen me in over a year so just to make sure she didn't go off thinking I was pregnant I pointed out to her that I was not and showed her my empathy belly. It would have been pretty bad if she had left, called my grandma and started a whole train of disbelieving people going to my parents and I with questions.