Belle's a Floater

A couple of months ago we began swimming lessons with the Infant Swimming Resource. Due to her stubbornness, Annabelle started off slow, but she has definitely come a long way. She took lessons for probably a total of about 8 weeks, and in that time she has learned so much. Yesterday was her last official lesson, and I brought the video camera this week to capture her in action (and in stereo). During the lesson in the video, she is fully clothed and wearing a regular diaper in order to simulate a real-life possible scenario of falling into a pool when no one else is around. A regular diaper is much heavier than a swimming diaper, so the instructor wants to make sure that she's able to adapt to more weight on her lower half. Also, clothes are much more constricting than wearing a bathing suit, so they want to make sure that she's able to deal with that too. The day before this lesson, she wore a dress that the instructor intentionally threw over her face to make sure that she'd correctly push it off of her face in the course of getting into the floating routine. She did it all perfectly! As you can tell from the video, the lessons are NOT her favorite thing (she still cries through the whole lesson), but she does it so well and it's definitely worth it if it means it could possibly save her life!

Some things to note while watching the video that you probably wouldn't notice without having attended the lessons or having seen how far she's come are: 1. Annabelle is tossed into the water without warning her to hold her breath. When the lessons began, the teacher would watch her breathing pattern and only put her under water when she was breathing out. She now knows to hold her breath as soon as her face hits the water, whereas before she was breathing in the water and choking on it. 2. When floating, if water gets into her mouth she spits it out instead of gurgling or swallowing it. This took a while to develop, but makes a big difference in her ability to float without choking.

Apparently the video was deemed as "inappropriate" on YouTube, so it has been taken down. You can still view the video on Annabelle's Video page.

Even as recently as the last couple of weeks of lessons, I was wondering if the class had really been worth the time, energy, and money that we spent, but now I'm definitely glad that we did it. Of course, the safety is the most important part of it, but I also think Belle feels more comfortable in the water than she would otherwise, and I also feel more comfortable letting her play in a big pool without sitting over her the whole time (when playing on the steps). I don't know how much time I'll have to work on this, but the instructor gave me some tips at her last lesson about things that I can do to keep teaching her more (like flipping back out of the float to swim toward the side once she's caught her breath). Hopefully we'll have a chance to get out in the water and keep this good thing going this season. Next summer, I may have a little water baby on my hands! :)