20 Weeks

Swim lessons! Our friends Mikki and Brian and their baby Vera signed up for the same class as us. It's great having other people in the class we know. Although the girls are mostly oblivious of each other now, it'll be nice as they get older. In general the instructor tries to keep the classes together as long as everyone keeps signing up and the schedule works. So, in theory, we could be in class with the same people for as long as we go. We have a good group, at least three of the other families are in my natural parenting group too, so that's great. As a side note, Ella is the youngest in our class by about a month, although not the smallest.

This is our class. That's our instructor Alex in the middle with the doll. We started out by learning the safety hold, which is the position the babies are in there. We then learned a little song that we'll start all of our classes with. Alex says the singing helps to relax the babies and also signals it's time to start. Ella did great right from the beginning. You never would have guessed it was her first time in the water. I thought she might tense up or get clinging when we hit the water, but not at all. Most of the babies did really well. I guess they don't know there's any reason to be concerned.

After learning the safety hold and the song we moved around in the water some, just to get the kiddos used to it. The next thing was the position above. Basically Mom or Dad just supports the baby's upper torso so their heads don't go under. As soon as you let go their little bottoms float up and some (Ella) start kicking away. She did great with this, even though her mouth hit the water a few times and she swallowed a little water. She insisted on keeping her hands in her mouth most of the time which meant even more water in the mouth, but it didn't seem to bother her too much.

The next thing we did was learn the safety turn. The pictures weren't so great of this, you couldn't really tell what was going on. Basically, you hold the baby facing out at arms length, call his or her name and as soon as they start to turn their heads, you start saying "turn, turn..." and turn them the rest of the way around and into you. The idea is, eventually, they learn that if they jump or fall in or start to swim away but can't make it, they can turn back if they need you and you'll grab them. Obviously it takes a long time to learn this, so we'll do it every lesson. It was hard to even get the babies to turn at their names being called today. I guess there was just too much interesting stuff going on.

The next thing we did was floating. Ella was very unsure of this at first. As soon as her ears hit the water, she closed her eyes and started shaking her head back and forth like "nuh-uh!". But after a few seconds, she realized she was ok and she did great. This was the point were we started to get some unhappy babies. A few cried a little, some just kept trying to sit up which is a natural instinct after six or so months. We're supposed to have them practice in the bath as much as possible to help them get used to it.

The last thing we did was this extended arm swim. Ella kept putting her face into the water, which she didn't like too much, but didn't really get upset. She was starting to get a little sleepy by this time, so I don't think she enjoyed this position as much as the others, but she kicked a ton and did just fine.

We ended the class with another little song, again to indicate to the babies that we were finished. Ella got very chatty during the song, trying to out sing everyone. She got a smidge fussy when we took her out of the water. The pool is heated and the room is quite warm, but I guess it was still a little cool for her. Once we got her dry and changed she was fine. It was so much fun, I can't wait to go back! Ella seemed to really enjoy it too and I hope it'll only get better as she gets older.