Embarrassing Moment Of My Life #895786

As I was writing my blog yesterday about our romantic getaway, I remembered something that happened to me a few years ago, one of those embarrassing moments that you like to forget and pretend didn’t happen.

I’m good at doing that because I’m fairly excellent at making a complete dick of myself in public.

In August 2007, when Luca was only a month old and Holly was three, we took the kids to Bournemouth for a bit of a summer break by the beach. We stayed in one of those typically British seaside hotels, the ones you read about in old English novels. It was perched up high on the hill and had a big outdoor pool which was packed with people because personally I think in England you’d die from hypothermia if you swam in the sea without a wetsuit, even in the summer.

Luca was about five weeks old so I was still looking mightily grotesque as pregnancy was not my friend. I’d gained enough weight for about six healthy pregnancies and was breastfeeding so I had these enormous boobs in addition to the extra 50% body weight I was carrying. All this was the last thing I felt like pouring into my maternity swimsuit (is there anything more unglamorous? I think not), but it was freakishly hot and I wanted to cool off.

So while Rob sipped Pimms and minded Luca, I took Holly for a swim in the pool. I picked a sun lounge out of the view of everyone because I was feeling so self-conscious and assessed the situation before making my crucially timed move from the sun lounge to the pool in order to minimise the amount of eyes that lay on my ample flesh.

Once I was safely in the pool and out of view unless you were unfortunate enough to be under the water with goggles on, Holly and I splashed around and were having lots of fun until she took in a big gulp of water and started coughing.

Now Holly is one of those kids who vomits at the drop of a hat, so as soon as she started to cough I knew a vomit was soon to follow so I grabbed her and tried to swim to the pool edge but didn’t get there in time and she vomited all her lunch up in the pool. I’ll never forget what she had eaten that day because the memory of hundreds of little macaroni in red sauce and mushroom slices floating on the surface of that pool will haunt me for life.

We had made quite a spectacular scene by this point as swarms of people made their way from the water in haste. I’d tried to scoop all the vomit to the side of the pool so it sat there in a mushy chlorinated pile while I got out of the pool in search of some towels with the entire hotel watching me, which considering my efforts to go unnoticed, was horrifying …

The lifeguard gave me a couple of towels so I spent about ten minutes cleaning it all up, in nothing but my swimsuit. I didn’t even like Rob seeing me in it but here I was in full view of half of southern England cleaning up regurgitated macaroni from the side of the pool. Soul destroying.

I was starting to feel really panicky because nobody would stop staring at me and I heard many, MANY people sniggering. I was so mortified at what had happened and wanted to get out of there toot sweet so I looked down to pick up Holly who was sitting on the floor, and what should I see?

Wait for it ….

My swollen, milk engorged left boob, hanging out of my swimming costume for the world to see. With little beads of breast milk dripping off the end …..

I still want the ground to swallow me up when I remember it.