Swimming with baby

Here in Australia most of us are aware these days of the perils of the backyard swimming pool or even the bath for that matter and we are pretty much all shit scared of it all! Hence, the prolific rise and rise of the "baby swimming/water classes". I think they are EXCELLENT, but let's face it, not all of our little one's take to it like the proverbial "duck to water". Here is a snippet of how my 20 month old daughter is coping with her lessons!

I started her 3 weeks ago at age 19 months. We have started in the "advanced water babies" class which is primarily focussed on water awareness and safety and basically teaching the kids that if they fall in, the right thing to do is get to the edge and get out.

So, firstly I had to consider that I would be getting into the water with her at this point which meant the inevitable trip up to Myer to buy myself some sort of cossie that would cover up as much of my "post baby body" as possible! I presumed that none of the other mums would even give a damn what I was wearing but I still felt self concious about it. After a rather arduous change room session I came to the realisation that all swimwear designers believe that once a woman hits the ripe old age of 37, they should no longer be trying to fit into a cossie!!! What are they thinking?? The teeny weeny bikinis barely cover up one breast let alone both of them and as for the briefs, well, what can I say, if they were any briefer they would be non existant!!! I ended up settling for a pair of "swim shorts" which once submerged in the water, blow up like a balloon around my waist, but they will have to do for the time being!

Anyway, we had a pair of speedos left over from my elder daughter's baby swimming classes that were still in excellent condition so Lotus inherited them from her sister and teamed with her swimming nappies, she was ready to go.

We headed down early for the first class so that I could suss out how it all worked, where was the best place to get changed and so that Lotus could have a little look at what they were doing prior to us getting in ourselves.

All was going reasonably well until it was time to actually get in the water. Lotus was pretty aprehensive so I took it easy and held her up on my hip so that really only her bum and legs were in the water. This made her nervous enough and she began babbling away about unrelated topics until it was time to go in a bit deeper to where our class was beginning. This made her so upset that the babbling became quite loud shouting along the lines of, "i get out, i get out, no, i no like it, no, i get out, no no no, i no like it".

I persisted and took her and joined the circle of eager, happy mums, toting their cute little water babies ready to enjoy themselves for the next half hour. Unfortuneatly for them all, my Lotus was not in the slightest bit interested in their enjoyment factor and wailed, bellowed and high pitched screamed for the next 25 mins until I could bear it no longer and retreated to the change rooms to give her her snacky and get home for a bex and a lie down!

I forgot to mention that Lotus somehow lost the ability to determine where the material of my top finished and my skin underneath started and hence held tightly to it all with her pincer like hands leaving me bruised and battered beyond belief. I had to prise her off of me and I watched my skin stretch out like mozzarella on a pizza! Youch!!!

My favourite part of the class however was when the swimming teacher tried to "encourage" Lotus to "walk" the length of the floating mat to meet me at the other end and "jump" into my arms! This consisted of Lotus getting the teacher's hand in her vice like grip and stiffening her body so that the poor teacher could only drag her along the mat with just her big toes scraping along. When they finally got to the end I had to drag her off the edge and those big toes seemed to have become attached to that mat!

I promised the other mum's that I'd bring them all ear plugs when we return next week!

No wonder I'm mad!