Mommy Wars: Swim Win

I owe you a couple of updates on the mommy wars, which are held up by a lack of pictures.  I decided to go ahead and trust that my audience doesn't need shiny stuff to keep reading.

I took the baby to his first swimming lesson recently.  This might not seem newsworthy, but I would like to point out two factors; first, that I am heavy (the BMI calculation labels me "obese"), and second, that I have a water phobia.  Being in a bathing suit in a public place, and being near (never mind in) more than a teapot full of water, are two things that I generally work pretty hard to avoid.

There were also minor annoyances; having missed the first class, feeling like we were already behind and wouldn't know the routine, and being ten minutes late for no good reason other than I was probably subconsciously trying to sabotage the whole thing.

The thing is, though, once we were finally there and suited up and in the pool and introduced... the baby LOVED it.  He didn't cry once.  He floated on his back and on his front, and splashed with his hands.  He loved the other baby who was his age, and the toddler who insisted in kissing him, and the "big" boy and girl who could kick and push off from the edge.  I didn't love it quite so much, but I managed to stay in the water the whole 20 minutes of the class.

The best part was in the last few minutes of class, when the ladies started arriving on deck for their shallow-water Aquafit class.  They were in their 70s and 80s, I would guess.  Some were in Speedos, some in sexy ruched glamour suits, and all unself-consciously chatting away to their friends.  The best was the little old lady who waited for someone to open the change-room door, so she could push her walker out onto the pool deck and right up to the edge of the water.  I watched these fabulous women and felt tears pricking my eyes.  I wanted to be them when I grow up.  Hell, I want to start being them now; comfortable in their skins and their swimsuits, at the pool just because they love it.  And since all of this is happening in my head, I can control (or at least affect) it, and I'm going to try to do it.

This isn't really a "Mommy Wars" win, since I didn't take him to one of the low-chlorine, special baby-friendly swimming pools.  But it's a perfect example of how doing something that's good for him is good for me too.  Now I'm off to research Adult Learn-To-Swim classes and buy one of those Speedos...