Hello Tired Troopers!
Swim time!!!!!! Before having kids I was so impressed with the babies, BABIES – like can’t walk or talk yet babies – that couldn’t necessarily swim, but if they were thrown, yes, thrown into a pool, they could crocodile/tad pole wiggle up to the surface and flip over onto their backs and keep themselves afloat long enough to survive in an accident. I thought this was the coolest thing I’d ever seen!!! Seriously look it up, cause the videos are crazy, they don’t look real! Like a defying gravity type of unreal!
NOW I AM NOT CONDONING THROWING YOUR BABY, CHILD OR EVEN PET INTO THE WATER, but these videos taught me that it really isn’t ever too soon to start teaching your kid to swim. Flash forward and my babies are 11 months old. My NICU Baby Buddy texted me about a local swim class that she signed her 10 month old son up for and asked if we wanted to join. I immediately felt the “Mommy Guilt” of already being behind because the old baby swim videos I had seen immediately popped into my head and I thought oh crap, those babies were way smaller than my kids! But, that’s why you have a tribe! She reached out to share this experience with us, bless you NICU Baby Buddy!!!
I’m also going to preface this with an old extended family story. My grandparents had a pool growing up and my grandpa was a cement mason, so this pool was legit. It was built in the classic peanut shape profile with a large shallow end that drastically sloped down into a large deep end all surrounded by concrete flatwork. Now, as an adult, being a fan of construction myself, it really was a thing of beauty… it was so overbuilt that it will probably still be standing a million years from now. But back to the story…
What i was told was that a cousin of mine was 2 years old and she could walk. Well, her family had gone over to our grandparents house to carpool to dinner or some “event” where they were “all dressed up”. Sure as s*** my cousin went tottling over to the pool, fell in, and proceeded to sink to the bottom. Her mother realized and ran to the edge of the pool and stopped, looked down at her outfit, and went, “George, GO GET HER!” To which my uncle jumped in and saved her.
Now, my aunt was a saint, I’m 100% sure she probably saw the entire thing happen and therefore knew my cousin was fine and that my uncle had ample time to save her, but still! It is a now funny family story that has more turned into an old family legend than anything. In my head I always pictured my aunt in a silk baby blue evening gown, a pearl necklace and white opera-length gloves (I know I’m wrong, but I heard this story when I was teeny tiny, so that’s apparently what my little brain thought of as “all dressed up” and is just what i always pictured lol). So, of course she told my uncle to jump in to get her! Hello, evening gown?! Haha anyways, I just grew up knowing of a first-hand account of how dangerous pools + babies were and it has always stuck with me. I even know grown adults to this day who still don’t know how to swim!!! So, I am bound and determined for my babies to learn to swim as early as possible!
Back to our first swim lesson! Now what Mommy wears is a whole other deal – one I already talked about in my blog, “Spontaneous (sort of) Trip” and my product review on TA3 and Yitty swimsuits. So, I’m not going to unpack that again here… I will just say I knew exactly which tummy-sucking-in-waist-sinching swimsuit and swim skirt (not just for Granny’s… anymore!) I was going to ROCK at the pool! And I honestly felt really confident! Thank you Lizzo! I see you girl!
Enough about me though, I was way more excited to see my babies in the adorable hand-me-down swim suits we got from Tulip Mama! Now, I knew I’d need to get the kids swim diapers, but what the hell were those and how the hell do they work?! Not gonna lie, I totally looked this up… for those of you like me who don’t know, a swim diaper is nonabsorbent, it is designed to freely allow liquid to pass through it. It is only designed to keep in solids. Ok, so pee can pass through, poop can’t. Got it. Makes sense, a normal diaper would puff up instantly and weigh the kids down… ladies, picture your tampons hitting the toilet water… lol Well, at first I was going to buy disposable swim diapers, but a few clicks later in my research I saw reusable swim diapers. They looked just like the cloth cover up diapers my MIL bought us. I ran to check that what she gifted us would work and they were PERFECT!
Holy crap! We actually have a use for these now! Side note, my MIL is a hippy (in the best sense) who read up on “all the chemicals” in disposable diapers, blah, blah, blah. I was totally open to the idea of using reusable cloth diapers until we found out we were having twins! That ship sailed immediately! But, her gift didn’t completely go to waste because we ended up using the super absorbent cloth diaper liners as burp rags! They were PERFECT for this! We have used the crap out of them (pun intended). And now the 6 outer cloth cover ups that have been in a drawer for the past 11 months also had a use! Woo hoo!
Ok, so now I knew exactly what I was going to wear, exactly what my babies were going to wear, I had figured out the mystery behind swim diapers, and apparently already had 6 of them ready to go! Check, check, check! But, what in the heck am I supposed to expect for a swim class designed for 0-2 year olds? Ok, guess I’m looking it up again… Reddit to the rescue! Have you ever noticed that you can ask the most random questions and sure as s*** you will come across multiple Reddit posts that answer your question perfectly?!
Well, in reading Reddit posts I came across a wonderful tip. One Mama said she would dress her kid in their swim diaper and swimsuit before leaving the house, but because swim diapers don’t contain pee, she would put a regular diaper on the outside of everything, then pull the regular diaper off before showering with her baby and getting into the pool. Absolute GENIUS! Especially when the baby swimsuit doesn’t have crotch snaps, which both of ours didn’t. We totally did this, and she was right, it looks weird, but it totally worked! I took their regular diapers off just before showering and yep, both wet! Thank you for your advice Reddit Mama!
I wore my bathing suit, swim skirt and a baggy off-the-shoulder tee there and back home, I just sat on my towel for the ride home. I was really glad I put the kids in their suits at home cause it was a bit of a hassle, but I changed them into dry clothes there. Worked great! P.S. after this first swim lesson I just started taking the kids home in only dry diapers, because getting their wet swimsuits off, then dry clothes immediately on was more of a hassle that the kids didn’t like and it was plenty warm to rock a diaper for the drive home.
We run a man-to-man defense in my family, so 99% of the time we rock a 1:1 adult to baby ratio, and I knew we would need that for this class. So, my sister, The Godmother, The LEGEND, took our son and I took our daughter. Hubby and G’ma came to watch the excitement! (Hubby was still healing from his vasectomy, so he didn’t want to get into the pool just yet). Plus they were able to get awesome pics of their first swim lesson! So, take a support person, trust me! Shoot even of it’s 2 adults and 1 kid, both of you get in the pool with them if you want to! You can take turns with your kid during the lesson, which is what we ended up doing… but I’m getting there….
Still in my research of what to expect at a baby swim lesson I learned that it’s mostly singing songs and just introducing your baby to water. Ok, no prob! I’m sure every swim class is different, but this one was a bit more than a simple introduction… For the first activity, what the instructor had us do was put our babies sitting up on the ledge of the pool and us parents were in the pool facing them. We sang a song (that she didn’t teach us) and had them “jump” off the side, kick out, turn around, kick back, and climb back up the pool side with hands and feet… talk about sink or swim time lol luckily the “song” was short and simple, but making my baby who had only been in the bathtub at this point do this advanced series of moves wasn’t as easy! Talk about jumping into the deep end feet first!
My little girl did NOT like this first activity, so I used most of the time to calm her down and talk to her and acclimate her to the water. She did much better with the rest of the activities, but the first one just put a damper on the whole lesson. Then, my poor little baby started shivering. It was a heated pool and 96 degrees outside, but it was a little breezy and she runs cold anyways, so half way through I called it and handed her to Hubby. I then, turned my attention to my sister and our son, who were both ROCKING it by the way! Our son is a lot more outgoing, so at one point even the teacher came up and used him as an example to dunk him under the water!!! Whoa! He handled it like a champ!
Well, the teacher not realizing I had handed our daughter to my husband dead serious looked at me and went, “Where is your baby?!” I explained she got too cold and was safe snuggled in a towel with Dad. She laughed (luckily) and goes, “Oh, ok, as long as she isn’t on the bottom, we’re good.” In my head I thought, um, has that actually happened before?! Eeks!
So, the rest of the lesson went great. Sis and I took turns with our boy and by the end he was tired, you could see it in his eyes. They both passed out on the ride home. When we got home I immediately jumped onto Amazon to see if I could get a little baby insulated wetsuit for our daughter before the next class. Amazon to the rescue! The classes are Tuesdays and Thursdays and the wetsuit I found was available to be delivered next day, YES!!! So, hopefully she is more comfortable next time and can stay in the water for the entire class. Stay tuned…
The Godmother, The LEGEND, and Tired Mama and Baby Boy at the first swim lesson! Sharing because Baby Girl had already gotten too cold to continue…
Update: I was able to get a wetsuit for our daughter from Amazon in time for our next class and it was a game changer! She was much warmer and therefore much more comfortable and was able to stay in the pool for the entire class! Yay!!!!! And it sure turns heads! We have used it now for 3 swim classes and every single class so far people have come up to me and said, I’ve never seen a baby wetsuit before! Do you like it? Where did you get it?! Baby girl might look like she’s ready for deep sea diving, but she’s a trendsetter!