Radio Aire presenter Caroline Verdon gets her knickers in a twist about hospital disaster

After eight days at St James’ Hospital I finally was well enough to go home at the weekend – and not a minute too soon.
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I cannot thank everyone there enough for keeping the baby and me safe - from the consultants and doctors and midwives and assistants to the cleaning staff and cooks. Everyone was not only fantastic medically but also so kind and accommodating. They completely understood my anxiety over my blood pressure going weird during my pregnancy and could not have been any better in making me feel calm and relaxed.

In part, it was quite nice to have some time out from the real world, no jobs to do, no meals to cook or post to deal with, just naps and Netflix and the hourly prod. I did get to the point though where I just desperately wanted to be well enough to be in my own bed, partly because I really missed my husband and three-year-old and partly because I made a fool of myself in front of a load of binmen.

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Every morning I was in hospital, I’d put my bag on the chair by the window, pick out the clothes I was going to wear and gently place them on the windowsill ahead of grabbing my towel and shampoo and going for a shower. We all know the weather has been insanely hot so the windows to my room were always open, letting in whatever gentle breeze would waft through. On this particular morning I just wasn’t paying enough attention and as I took my underwear out of my bag, I managed to (rather than place it neatly on the windowsill) fling it out of the window.

I’m not a small woman at the best of times and when you chuck in being pregnant, it means my maternity pants are utterly gigantic. Bridget Jones has nothing on me. In fact they are so big I’m convinced that Leeds Bradford Air Control Tower probably saw them appear on their radar system and I should count myself lucky that the MOD didn’t scramble jets to track a foreign object in the airspace.

I watched in utter horror as my humongous maternity pants took on a life of their own and turned themselves into a large inflated blimp as they made their way to the ground - and I wasn’t alone. My room backed onto a side road where the bins were stored and, of course, they would have made their agonizing descent at the exact moment five men on a bin wagon were emptying the wheelies.

Obviously I managed to make the situation worse, because there was a slim chance they may not have noticed the large hot air balloon that was making its way to the floor - only I panicked and let out a loud “OH MY GOD”, causing them too look up and witness for themselves my pants transfer themselves into some sort of gigantic sail.

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As they looked up at me and then my pants, and then me again I wished the ground would swallow me up. Had I been quick enough I would have ducked and hidden but instead I watched in horror as my knickers descended all five floors to the ground. I couldn’t have been on the ground floor could I? If I’m going to disgrace myself I need to do it with maximum effect!

When my mammoth knickers finally landed to the right of one of the men’s feet, he looked up at me and hollered “errrr do you want these back love?” What was I supposed to say to that? If I said yes I would then have had to come face to face with him, completely humiliated. In order to get onto the ward he would had to have buzzed the buzzer and been asked who he was there for. What would he have said? “Oh I’m just giving some woman her pants back. What’s her name? No idea.”

I decided I would rather go commando, so instead I found myself shouting back “no, it’s OK, you can keep them,” making myself look like even more of a massive weirdo. I swear I am a walking disaster.