Baby Swimming

Baby Swimming

Another day, another bout of misplaced optimism. Today I took Es to “baby-swimming”.

 We started off with an awkward conversation at the help desk. One of the benefits of having a small human strapped on to your chest is that you can pretty much predict the chit chat that is going to come your way in the course of any day. As a result, you develop a stock of mildly amusing retorts upon which you can rely to make conversations glide seamlessly by. To ‘what a lovely baby’ you reply ‘well, we think so ...but then we would (chortle chortle).’ To ‘what a lovely pram’ you reply ‘Oh for a moment I thought you were going to say ‘what a lovely baby’!’ (chortle chortle) and so on. Gone are the days of mulling over what you really should have said to stranger X. Now you can do all the mulling in advance.

But this particular conversation was not aimed at me. Es is big for her age.  I mean huge. A Godzilla of the baby world. This has the unfortunate side effect of making adults and juniors alike talk to her as if she is much older than she really is.... and of making Es appear a little slow off the mark. It took a good minute for the cashier to realize that Es didn’t understand a single thing she was saying to her, and that Es had no plans of waving goodbye any time soon. If it hadn’t been so awkward I would have found a little pleasure in watching the penny drop.  As things went, I put Esme’s blank stare down to shyness, and hurried off to the giant pool of chlorine and baby wee I was about to immerse myself in.

The  really funny thing about baby swimming groups is that they invariably have - as their official ambition - the goal of getting your baby to swim under water. Of course no baby ever accomplishes this, but some get dunked and manage to emerge without crying – and this is what we parents mean by ‘swimming under water’.  Those babies who accomplish this feat are heralded as achievers and lavished with praise.  And those who do not are consoled – their parents told to give it time.  Forgive me if I am wrong, but this ambition is misguided at best. It is the sort of bizarre ritual you would expect to find in the pages of a history text book – a tale to gawk at - of an ancient and brutal civisation. ‘Baby-Dunking’. And yet here I was, as close to sane as I have ever been, pushing my cherished baby under the water.  Why? Because Sally, our instructor - the all powerful oversee-er of the leisure pool -  told me to. Because I had paid £4 for this class, and I was going to get my monies worth... (If baby-dunking was on the menu, so be it...) Because it is baby-swimming-group culture. I was not going to be the one to embarass myself by going against the grain – I would be bumping into these parents on and off for the next ten years or so and I did not want to be known as the chicken. Nor was I going to lead a small revolution against Sally’s tyrannical rein.

Es got dunked.  She cried. I was consoled and feigned disappointment at my baby's ‘failure’.

That was baby-swimming.  Try it if you dare, but dont expect the front crawl.