In November 2010, I was in the very first phases of "travelling with kid", which is to say I was six months pregnant.
I can't say I was aglow with the magic of impending parenthood. Despite the myths peddled by mommy magazines, I hadn't been doing a lot of gazing into the distance, one arm cupping my magnificent belly, while I cultivated a face that said I was either pondering the miracle of procreation, or I was about to sneeze. Mostly I was hot and bothered. The belly was more Moby Dick than Miracle on 34th Street, and I was acutely aware of the looming changes.
And so we did what any self-respecting, soon-to-be first-time parents were doing at the time: we booked a babymoon in the Seychelles, one last, adults-only hurrah before the little blessing arrived.
The plan was carefully plotted. One week at a beachfront boutique hotel on Praslin, and one week at a self-catering resort on Mahé.
I'd do my gazing into the distance from a palm-thatched bungalow, and my eating for two in the over-water restaurant. Dad could drink the cocktails for both of us. A win-win.
As we checked in on Praslin, the sun was shining and the palms were conducting a gentle symphony on the beach, a mere waddle from our chalet. Let the belly patting commence.
The first peek at the water's edge, however, revealed a hiccup. The website had promised a long, perfect stretch of coast - pure, white sands and azure waters and all that. But here, the shallows presented a thick, black line, a morass of seaweed stretching out metres from the shore. Beyond it, sunlight winked off the clean, clear sea, beckoning us on.
We tried wading in, but the plants were so thick and tightly knit, they coiled around our toes, and clung on. Walking out was going to be an inelegant, long-winded, leg-hoisting affair.
"Just paddle out," a staff member told us, pointing at the hotel's little watersport centre.
In the borrowed canoe, we made short work of the toe-hungry plants. Once we'd cleared the dark forest, we paddled on a while to where the water was lovely and deep and so clear we could see the quiet, sandy floor wafting a few metres beneath our feet.
We leapt off and frolicked a while. The afternoon disappeared in a haze of sunshine and darting fish and the weightlessness of water. All was right with the world.
It was only when we decided to head back in that the trouble became clear: how to get back in the boat? The sea bed was too far down for me to use it as a launch pad. In a normal body, of course, I could have just boosted myself up by the arms and then flopped onto my tummy, but the magnificent bump made that impossible.
I tried launching in backwards, but couldn't quite make it. We tried tipping the canoe slightly so I could roll in. It capsized. Standing in the boat, Dad tried locking his arms around my chest and heaving me up. It wobbled a furious objection.
By then the sky was seeping to pink at its edges and the shore seemed very far away. Still I was treading water like a seal alongside a tourist boat, eager for a tossed fish.
At last, we agreed there was nothing else for it. Indignity be damned: I'd have to be towed in.
Dad pointed the canoe shoreward, and I, a Rubenesque mermaid, drifting on my back behind it so as not to get whacked by the paddle, held on with one arm raised over my head.
And thus we made the long haul for land. The water rushed soothingly past my ears and, from my going-backwards vantage point, the belly followed us like its own tiny island. A seagull could have landed there.
As we drew closer to shore and I pictured a smattering of amused onlookers, I cupped my free arm around my belly, and squinted into the sky.
I hoped that anyone watching would image me lost in deep contemplation of the majesty of creation.
In truth, the sun was a big ball of butter burning above me. I needed a sneeze.
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