Another blog-worthy story

3 years ago (three years!) I blogged about my fear of Jacob pooping in a public swimming pool. That's when I learned that when a child has an accident in the pool, they literally evacuate the whole darn thing and have to disinfect the pool immediately as a safety precaution. The disinfection process is not small either. The pool is closed for hours -- usually for the day. My fear subsided when he was potty trained, but recently, in Hawaii, they had to evacuate the entire pool (and it's a big pool folks) because a child had let a little turd escape. My anxiety returned.

Fast forward to today.

It was a regular day in Belmont. Jacob had camp at The Little Gym and Nicole watched Maddie while I worked. No sign of any illness here since we are all finally on the mend after 3 weeks of virus and fever filled days. We show up for Jacob's new (I repeat, NEW) swim class at the YMCA and he jumps right in the pool. I drop Maddie off at the childcare center at the gym and then park myself on the elliptical machine right outside the pool window so I can get glimpses of Jacob in his class. All was going swimmingly (ha, sorry, had to), when I started wondering why I hadn't seen him through the window in a while. In fact, I hadn't seen any of the kids pass by the window in the pool. I pause my machine, jump off and look through the window only to see people milling about, and some men pouring stuff into the pool. "huh", I think, "that's strange". But I jump back on my machine. A couple of minutes pass when I see people coming into the gym, from the pool and it's clear that nobody is going back in. My heart starts pounding and I immediately think "Oh dear god, please tell me Jacob didn't crap in the pool. Surely he didn't crap in the pool. It was some other kid that crapped in the pool." I sprint into the pool area and see Jacob and 2 other kids sitting on the side with their teacher. I run over and say "WHAT happened?!" The teacher looks at me and says "Jacob VOMITED in the pool."

Well hell. I didn't see THAT coming.

Shocked, I immediately ask how it happened and she said she told Jacob to let go of the side with one hand, but instead he let go with 2 hands and went under and gulped a lot of water. When he came up, he just threw everything up. He looks at me and says "Mommy, I 'frew' up in the pool." Just so you know, in public pool sanitary standards, they consider vomiting as bad as pooping. Who knew. So, out came everyone -- the adults, the kids, the seniors enjoying their laps. Everyone was immediately evacuated. And my poor kid was sitting there with vomit all over himself.

Needless to say, I got him cleaned up and dressed ASAP and we high-tailed it out of there. I felt so badly for him that I decided we should go have some fun where our friends were having a playdate at Warner's house. Oh, and I had to share the story, of course. :)

Rest assured that Jacob is just fine. The vomiting was a direct result of the pool water consumption and nothing else. But to think...I was worried about poop all this time...