What to Expect When Introducing your Baby to Swimming Lessons.
Fact Checked
15th March 2024
Exploring anything new with your baby can cause a lot of mixed emotions, especially when your in a unfamiliar environment such as a swimming pool.
Introducing your baby to the pool at a young age has a lot of benefits, by teaching little one basic life skills from a young age could help in the event of ever getting into trouble in water as well as a great bonding session for you both.
On coming to your first session you may worry on how to hold baby in the pool. How to submerge baby in the water and how baby will react to being in the pool. The answer is all babies are different, some don’t change at all throughout the session and just go through the motions along with parent and teacher, some babies love the water and you can see the excitement as they grow and as all parts of life some babies don’t like the first interactions within the pool.
As we here at Swim City make our class sizes as small as possible with a maximum of 6 babies in the water, this gives us time to work with each parent and baby to adapt the skills to make sure are both as comfortable as possible in the pool by teaching you the correct holds, interacting songs and submerges, this along with guidance from the instructor will help you show baby the first basic water safety skills that we can develop throughout your time with us.
Remember the instructor is in the water for a reason. To help you. Ask questions if your unsure they will have the answers to help put your mind ease. Many people ask what age can I bring my baby to the sessions, we do advise that baby has their first set of immunisations before coming to the pool, this just allows baby to have a little boost to their immune system before being exposed to the pool, within the first months in the water the sessions will be very basic until little one starts to be able to see more clearly and support their own head then we can start to advance into teaching little one how to reach, hold on and roll onto their back along with many other skills.
What to Bring to the Session.
On bringing your little one to the pool try to make sure that little one has eaten at least 20 minutes prior to the session to allow their food to settle, arriving to your session a little early with help you have enough time to get both of you changed without the stress of a rush.
Bringing a swim nappy and thicker swim suit for babies can help keep any cold at bay and having a drink, snack and fluffy towel for after the session will help whilst your getting changed.
My name is Stacy Arslan and I am the joint founder of Swim City LLP, I have 18years experience of active swim teaching and coaching, in addition I have a degree in Sports development, alongside the team I teach swimming 6 days per week along with managing Swim City. I am also a mum to 3 children who love the water as much as I do.
