In at the deep end

Diary of a First-Time Dad
Edwin McGreal

When I was just a babe in arms my mother brought me to a baby swimming group. She still loves telling me how the instructor told her to let go of me in the water. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t even crawl, but my mother had to trust that I could swim.
She felt it was unnatural, but under persuasion, she did it. I was dropped underwater like a stone before emerging again a few seconds later swimming like a fish.
A fear of water is not something you are born with – after all babies are surrounded by fluid in the womb – so it makes perfect sense to get babies swimming before they can develop any such phobias. So that’s how it was that I found myself being dunked in a swimming pool before I even knew my own name!
Of course those lessons only got me so far ... an incident in Spain acquainted me with a fear of water. I was two, and one of my two older sisters pushed me into the deep end (I still do not know which, their omertà to this day is as impressive as it is frightening). I went from being able to swim at a few months old to not being able to swim when I was 14 years old. I did finally go back for swimming lessons though.
It is only in recent years that Aisling has learned how to swim, and with us living in Achill and only a stone’s throw from the beach in Dooega, we’re determined Frankie will be much more at her ease in the water as a child than either of her parents.
So, some 35 years after I was thrown in at the deep end, a family tradition endures!
Although the Water Babies classes we bring Frankie to are much less dramatic. We’ve yet to let go of Frankie like my mother was persuaded to do with me. We’ve spent all the time getting her used to the water, both on her front and back. There’s been a couple of ‘controlled dunks’ too. Frankie, and all the other babies in the class, are completely unruffled by it. I wouldn’t be impressed if someone pushed me underwater without telling me, but babies obviously think differently.
The hardest part of it all so far has not been the water at all, but the changing room after. Trying to get dressed while getting Frankie dry is hard enough without the sudden need for changing a dirty nappy. But, in fairness she saved me from ignominy by waiting ’til she was out of the pool. That is certainly not the type of floater anyone wants to see during baby swimming lessons.

> In his fortnightly column, first-time-father Edwin McGreal  chart the ups and downs of the biggest wake-up call of his life: parenthood.