Swimming with a toddler

Thursday started with Tippy Toes session at Sandbach and then picked Luke up from his Nannie's. He was deep into his lunchtime nap, much to his disgust I woke him which may not have been the best idea as he was a grumpy little man but it wasn't going to stop my plans to meet up with a friend for a swim. Luke has been swimming since he was 12 weeks old, one minute he loves it when I'm not allowed to hold him, the next he hates it when he's clinging onto me for dear life. This day he was the latter, holding on all through the session. He was born in the water so I always expected he would be the ultimate Water Baby, how wrong can a person be?

Today, we made the effort to go as a family to overcome his fear. He spent the first 10 minutes clinging on to his daddy like a koala then became very confident and splashing about and swimming furiously chasing his toys round the pool.

When I organised the first ever 'Bumps, Babes & Beyond' Show I met Anna Woodhart from Water Babies who runs Baby Swimming classes in South Cheshire. Here is a small biog about Anna. I've never taken Luke to one of her classes but I'm beginning to wish I had!

I first discovered Water Babies when my eldest son, Jack now 4, was about 6 months old. I was dreading returning to work and wanted to ‘do something else’- a feeling a think most new mums experience. I had also been looking into taking Jack to baby swimming classes and couldn’t find anything in my area, the closest was Liverpool!! So when I was reading my trusty Mother & Baby magazine one day and saw an article about 3 ladies who had quit their jobs, retrained and bought Water Babies franchises it seemed like the perfect solution. I literally put the magazine down, picked up the phone and off I went. Nine months later (after a huge amount of training and lots of hours of work!!) I launched my first class.

I am very lucky to be part of the world’s leading provider of baby and preschool swimming tuition, not only do we have the most highly trained teachers in the world, we also have a unique structured and progressive course that teaches you how to teach your baby. Nationally we currently teach over 20,000 babies per week water confidence and vital water safety skills.

I really, really love what I do- every day is different and exciting. We now teach over 600 babies and toddlers per week across Cheshire and Staffordshire and have just expanded into North Wales as well.

We have classes running 7 days a week in warm water pools across the area. If you would like some more information please call 01270 781239 or look at www.waterbabies.co.uk