My little Water Baby!

Little Man was about four months old when I signed us up for our first Water Babies classes. These classes claim to “teach your baby to swim”. They’re pretty expensive, but they’re fantastic for building confidence in the water – for the parent and the baby!

We completed two ten week courses of Water Babies. I found the first course much better. This was purely down to Little Man’s routine. When he was younger, the class time fell during what was a wakeful period of the day for him. But as he got older, shortly after we started the second set of classes, his routine changed, and he wanted to nap at the time the class was on. This meant he was often cranky during the class, especially during the later weeks, so we didn’t enjoy the second course of classes as much as the first.

The classes were very well-designed though. There were about eight babies and parents in the class. In the first set of classes, the parents were mostly mothers, but in the second set of classes some of the fathers attended them occasionally instead. Charlie took Little Man to about one-third of the classes. We thought it was important for both of us to be comfortable taking Little Man into the water.

Each week, we practised new skills with our babies in the water. From the very first week, we started getting the babies used to the sensation of being underwater. Little Man wasn’t too impressed at first, but after a couple of weeks he got used to it. I won’t say he ever started to enjoy being submerged, but he definitely didn’t freak out when it happened. That was one of the main objectives of the class, to ensure that if baby should ever end up falling into water, he wouldn’t panic, but would swim to the surface, and float, or catch onto the side if he could reach it.

In an average class, three or four of the swims involved going underwater. The rest of the time was spent singing songs, and playing with baby in the water. Little Man loved it. We also played games that taught baby to hold on to the side of the pool and support his own weight. I was amazed how quickly Little Man learned to respond to the prompt to “hold on, hold on!”

At the end of the first ten week course, Water Babies arranged an underwater photo shoot. Of course we had to buy the photos! How could we not?! After the second ten week course, we were given the option to go on and complete a third course. Water Babies recommend you complete four courses, or forty weeks in total. Unfortunately, I returned to work shortly after the end of the second course, so we weren’t able to continue. But I’m very glad we did the courses while I was on maternity leave. Both Charlie and I have no worries at all about taking Little Man into the pool now.