We have all seen the footage on the new of parents working from home and being disturbed by the little humans in their life, whether its as they do an important interview on the news, or a works call that gets gate crashed.

In the summer this year I had my very own moment!

I need to set the scene…. This is where I spent significant amounts of time hosting zoom sessions since late March 2020. From this corner of the spare bedroom I have delivered antenatal and postnatal sessions for the NCT, sling support, baby massage sessions, postnatal doula support, and supported an online doula course with Developing Doulas (you can read more about that here).

Picture this
My funniest ever moment on Zoom (so far) happened on a warm Summers evening.

It was the last session of an antenatal course, and we were coming up to a break in the session. This is always a nice time to do a relaxation and give everyone a chance to just chill out for a little while.

This particular course had 7 couples on it, and going into the relaxation they had all turned of their cameras and muted their microphones. They do this so that they can play music to accompany my voice as I guided them through the relaxation, and can relax without feeling watched and overlooked.

So this means its just me looking at myself and a screen of little black boxes. I have my best calming and soothing voice on. As it was our last session I had picked a script that set some positive intentions for the future, focused on building resilience and confidence.

I am getting to the crucial point; setting out some positive intentions for labour and birth and early parenting.

I’m in my flow, taking my time to read the script and using my most relaxing and soothing voice.

Then I hear my son enter the room next door to where I sit and zoom.

I hear him say as quietly as an 8 year old who knows what is about to happen can,

“Alexa fart”

Alexa then let out the longest loudest most humongous fart sound you have ever heard.

It was so loud it felt like the windows and doors we rattling. He had of course turned the volume up as high as it would go before issuing his command!

This loud, house shaking fart sound was accompanied by raucous howls of laughter from my son.

And long slow motion “noooooooooo” from my daughter as she desperately tried to stop the sound that was emanating from Alexa.

Then at the top of its voice which is in fact very loud, Alexa announced,

“That was a loud juicy one, would you like to hear another?”

Cue even more raucous and side-splitting laughter from my son as he yelled “Yes, Alexa fart”.

And, even more desperate yells from my daughter as she shouted “Alexa stop” repeatedly to try and over rule her brothers instructions.

I could barely hold it together, I breathed in and out slowly.

Then again a few mores as I tried so hard to hold in my giggles.

My shoulders shook with supressed laughter, and my sides ached.

I somehow managed to pull myself together and complete reading the relaxation script. I promptly went into the break, turned of my microphone and camera and laughed and laughed and laughed.

At the end of the session one of the women on the course asked what had happened, I fessed up. They had heard the noise, wondered what it was, and enjoyed watching me try not to totally corpse it as my shoulders shook and almost lost it!

I’m sharing this story now because this evening I met with group again via Zoom for their postnatal session.

It was wonderful to spend some time with them and meet their new little humans, we had a lovely evening together reflecting on their first few weeks as parents.

They gave me permission to this story with you.