After 7 months of working post-first-baby, I seemed to be handling it with dignity. I had walked through the halls of my company for months with no baby spit up on my shoulders, no sleeping at my desk, and no milk leaks that made me look like I had a wet bathing suit on underneath my silk blouse. I was doing alright…
The story below is what I get for being cocky.
I was sitting at my desk one day when I bumped my once smallish bust and noticed they had grown quite a bit. I looked down and stared at the girls in amazement. They were indecently large and filled unevenly. I felt like a lopsided Pamela Anderson.
I was pulling my collar out so I could actually see them, and didn’t notice that the president of the company was standing behind me smiling, waiting for me to finish. I snapped back into reality and told him I was fixing a button. I don’t think he believed me, but he was kind about it and didn’t stare when I turned around with my latest developments.
As if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, it gets so much worse…
After we talked for a few minutes, I headed downstairs to the locker room where I could pump and stare at my new Dolly Parton figure behind a locked door. I got my bag of supplies and turned down the hall to see a woman coming out of the room. I didn’t think anything of it until I walked in and figured out what she had been doing… using it as a nuclear testing site. The smell in that room was rancid! Like a skunk had sprayed sewer gas on a pile of compost on a hot summer day. Had I known her better, I would have offered to take her to the hospital.
But the locker room was the only place in the building I could have complete privacy. So I plugged in all the apparatuses that it takes to sit there like a milking heifer. I pulled up my shirt but it just wouldn’t stay put long enough to get the pumps in place. I decided to just take my shirt off and be quick about it because I was in the middle of working on something and I needed to get back upstairs.
With shirt off, I sat there looking at the rolls that had taken over my stomach and how my pants were still tight from the 9 lb watermelon that came out a few months before. I unbuttoned them with a deep sigh and saw the bright red line that tight pants leave on your stomach… getting a picture yet?
So I sat in the chair with shirt off, nursing bra unfastened, and pants unbuttoned. I assumed the position and turned the pump on to start milking myself. It always fascinates me how this actually works – I was a dairy cow! A very pale, sometimes hairy, dairy cow!
I took a deep breath and listened to the machine make it’s rhythmic sound. I heard it say something different with every pump, but that day I remember hearing “Knight Rider” over and over again. I make no sense.
I was just getting into the groove of it when I heard someone coming. I wasn’t worried though because I had locked the door… or had I?! I couldn’t remember actually locking the door because the smell of raw sewage had smacked me in the face and took my focus away from the task at hand.
I stood up, keeping the pumps carefully attached to keep the milking in progress, but I couldn’t reach the door knob with my hand (don’t ask what I had to go through to hold both pumps steady with one hand).
As I stood there, my unbuttoned pants started to slide down my legs. I popped my knee out to catch them just before they hit the floor. The voices were getting louder and one of them was female so I knew they were aiming straight for me. There was only one thing to do…
I lifted my foot to the door knob to use my big toe to poke the lock in. But just as I had gotten my leg up (and assumed a spread eagle type position) the woman opened the door and started speaking to me in a language I couldn’t understand but knew very well she was yelling at me to keep my crazy debauchery at home.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, a man I had worked with for four years was right behind her taking all of this in. She slammed the door and I was left to stand there, looking in the mirror at true mortification. There was the red pant line going across my waist, my bra unhooked, the pumps in hand, and milk spilled down my stomach pooling into soaking wet underwear that was in full view since my pants had fallen to my feet.
I collected my thoughts for a second, took my time getting cleaned up and dressed, then slowly opened the door to face the music. The woman, I’m sure, had run to tell everyone she knew what the pale freaky girl was caught doing in the bathroom.
The poor guy, however, was sitting on the bench in the lobby with his elbows on his knees, his head still shaking and his face bright red.
I sat down next to him and told him I was sorry he had to see that. He took a second, still focused on his feet and said, “Cami, I’ve been picturing you naked for years, but I never could have dreamed that up.”
I laughed out loud at his attempt to make a seriously awkward situation just a funny story. As we rode upstairs in the elevator, we laughed and joked about the image that would forever be burned on his memory. I was almost at ease again, which felt like a miracle.
The doors opened for him to get out, he smiled at me and added, “I hope you feel better… I hate when my stomach gets that upset.”
%$&#! He thought that smell was mine!
#BreastfeedingAdventures
#MotherdomInAllItsGlory
#MomentsThatMakeOrBreakYou
#DollyPartonMustHaveBackPain
Outrageously Ordinary 