Baby Swimming Lesson 33 Half Term

Our baby is almost 11 months old, and today's lesson was the last before the Summer break, so we took her Great Grandparents along to watch.

picture of baby swimming underwater

Firstly an aside, if you are following these articles purely for the techniques, you could skip this article. There was very little that we haven't already covered. The lesson was almost exactly the same as the previous lesson which I covered in more detail last week.

We don't get to see much family, Clare's family live a long way from us and unfortunately my own Mother passed away when I was in my twenties so never got to meet her grandchildren. This is one of the reasons why today was so special for us. My Grandparents are very old and my Grandma can only walk a few steps but she wasn't going to miss the chance to see her Great Granddaughter swimming.

They arrived an hour early and we told them the plan. I'd drive us all to the pool, but take Amélie in on my own. They would sneak in and watch a few minutes later once Amélie was in the pool. We warned them they would have to put the little blue plastic bags provided over their shoes for hygiene reasons. My Grandfather replied 'perhaps we should take some shopping bags' as he pointed to his feet.

I'd never noticed before but my Grandfather has huge feet, almost twice the size of mine. It was like Sideshow Bob in my own living room. As it happened the bags didn't fit over his shoes so he had to take his shoes off when he got there!

Amélie didn't notice them arrive and got on with the lesson as usual. As I've already said the lesson followed pretty much the same plan as the previous lesson. Everyone seemed to be having even more fun than usual, I certainly was. Having no new routines to concentrate on for once left us free to enjoy the experience more.

I remember the first time we saw the glide swim, it was a few weeks until I got to try it full on for myself. At the time I'd seriously doubted Amélie would take to it, but today's glide swim through a hoop seemed almost pedestrian.

As the Woggles were handed out I was hoping for the routine that impressed me the most so far. I was not disappointed! This is where the babies swim on their own supported by the Woggle. It's quite something to be in front of your baby as they swim towards you under their own steam. She can only walk 3 or 4 steps unaided and here she was, grinning ear to ear, legs kicking, chest bobbing, following me around the pool.

My Grandparents were gob smacked. They had expected to see a few Mothers gently moving their babies through the water. When it came to the instructor throwing the babies in off the side of the pool they couldn't believe what they were seeing.

At the end of the lesson we were all quite surprised at the gap until the next lesson. It's over a month until the next term. This will give me time to work on the diagrams section which really needs some new content with all of the new material we have covered. I'll try and update the diagrams weekly, and will naturally cover the lessons next term.

As for my Grandparents, the first thing they said when they got into the car after the lesson was 'We want to pay for the next set of lessons, and if you have any more children we want to pay for them to go as well'. I think that is a pretty strong endorsement for baby swimming lessons.