Wiped out before baby swimming lessons

Finally N’s started to enjoy his baby swimming lessons.  I decided when it came to rebooking for the toddler classes, that he was hating it the worst he’d ever done, so it was time to cancel and hope that we’d start again in September.  But of course, it then meant that he decided to start enjoying it with 3 sessions to go.

I’m hoping it was a case of him having got over his wobbles he’s had since October-ish, which was a longer phase than they’d said it would be.  It didn’t help that it seemed to be getting worse rather than better.

I do think it helps that I stopped nursery from putting him down for a nap in the morning.  He usually only has an after lunch nap, but Fridays he always seems to be more tired.  As soon as I put him in the car after picking him up, he’s asleep for the 2-3 minute drive home, transfer him to his cot and then he’s out for an hour until we have to leave for swimming. It’s all a bit tight (and he’ll also tend to drop off in the car on the way as well), but it seems to work him having a sleep right before swimming rather than earlier in the day.

So today was probably the best swimming session ever (the last one of course!).  He smiled throughout, didn’t cry after the underwater swims, and was happy enough all through the class.  

It was quite an empty session with only 5 in the class, half the normal number.  I don’t know whether the usually large class and the huge class after ours who always come and sit round the edge of the pool are a bad distraction for him, as he was fine all the way through until everyone from the next class turned up on the side to watch and he started crying a bit.  He wasn’t keen on doing the mat work which he’s usually ok with, but he was brilliant on the underwater swims which he’s never been fussed on even when he was enjoying his swimming when he was younger.

So now I’m going to have to find a pool that has public swimming on a Friday afternoon for us to go to, so we can keep momentum going. Even if we don’t go every week it’ll be good to keep a routine otherwise we’ll just never go.

Hopefully come September, we’ll be ready to start lessons again.  I’ll have to do some research on other local classes.  I’d love to carry on with Water Babies and do the toddler classes, but it is expensive, so if there are other toddler classes nearby for less than half the price, I shall probably check those out.

Did you take your babies and toddlers to swimming lessons?