Story Time - Someone had a ‘Really Rumbly Tummy’

Hey everyone!

thanks for voting in the poll - the winner was something that happened more than 2 decades ago but I thought about for years and years afterwards.

In 1999 I was 19 years old and attending an HND course at the local art college. I’d already studied there for my college education for two years before that and they’d just introduced the higher level courses as I was about to leave. I really didn’t want to go away to university so this suited me perfectly. As it was a new course the class was small (I think there were 12 students in total) and was made up mostly of mature students, most of which were part-time attendees. During the year three members of the group fell pregnant which was kind of bizarre! One of which was a mature student who I’ll call L

L’s husband came from New York and they shared their time back and forth between the two. She was part time - very part time, I think she only attended 2 days a week whilst most of the part timers attended for 3 or 4 - and for a period of about 4 weeks after Christmas she barely showed up at all. She kept saying she was sick, and of course everyone jumped to the natural conclusion so when she announced she was pregnant a couple of months later no one was surprised.

She was very forthcoming about everything pregnancy-wise - a little too forthcoming quite often! In early pregnancy she constantly complained about her morning sickness and bladder issues, later on it was heartburn and... no, more bladder issues! But as she neared the latter stages of her pregnancy she started telling us in detail about the antenatal classes she was attending each week

After the first one she came to college in a grumpy mood, telling us about how much she’d hated it, how she felt uncomfortable with the other prospective parents and how;

“It didn’t help that I had a really rumbly tummy.”

Now imagine being me, 19 years old in a world where I’d only had access to the internet for about a year and had lived a pretty sheltered life, didn’t really understand that fetishes could literally be anything and had NO idea why I had such intense feelings and emotions any time something involving a stomach noise happened or was referenced! I froze up, my pencil froze on the paper and I must have looked terrified! Luckily my back was to the majority of the room and the girl who usually sat next to me wasn’t there because she was off sick. Yeah, she was one of the other ones!

I felt like I was going to implode as L continued talking about it. I went over her words in my head so many times in years that followed that I can still remember them for the most part and although this isn’t word perfect it’s as accurate to the conversation as I remember:

“I don’t know why, I wasn’t hungry and I hadn’t just eaten but it wouldn’t stop rumbling. You know when your stomach just starts talking and talking and it just won’t stop? So I sat there with all these other couples staring at my bump and I was so embarrassed I couldn’t wait to get out of there!”

Things got even worse for me when another mature student, a nurse who I’ll call H, asked her loudly,

“Do you think you had wind in your bowels?”

She was VERY keen on interjecting with medical stuff.

Then L said something along the lines of,

“I don’t think so. I just think my insides were rearranging,” and that was that for the conversation. I was left sitting there, feeling like the whole world must know I was feeling things that i didn’t understand about something so embarrassing!

About 4 weeks later she had another story to tell after attending her second to last antenatal class and this time the culprit of the noise was a little easier to identify!

She was complaining that her husband was back in New York for a couple of weeks so she’d had to go alone and she already hated going. She moaned about all the other parents and then announced,

“and to make things worse i didn’t have time for dinner so I quickly ate something at the cafe before class began and I wolfed it down so fast my tummy gurgled the whole way through!”

Ohhhhhh god, I sat there dying again! I couldn’t believe it had happened twice. I felt like the world stopped turning as I froze up and listened to her carrying on.

‘My belly was really uncomfortable, I could feel everything moving about. I think I swallowed too much air because I started to feel really bloated and I couldn’t do my exercises properly!”

I think my fave must have been bright red, and I had no idea what to do! I just sat there and pretended I hadn’t heard her!

It was harder to pretend later that morning when her stomach let out a loud rumbling sound that went on for several seconds and several other members of the class laughed in response. L rubbed her bump and admonished it for showing her up by being ‘early for dinner’ and I just wanted to hide in the cupboard for the rest of the day!  There was one last incident the following week when her stomach made some bubbling sounds and she kept asking if anyone could hear and eventually she excused herself to the toilet!

For years and years I wondered if anyone sat in those classes she gurgled her way through felt the way I did or if I was alone.

You guys prove I’m not - thank you :)