This afternoon, we decided to bring Darius to a swimming pool. His debut swim was in a hot tub at Harbour Front (see Water Day for Darius!), followed by some dips in a small tub we bought at the comfort of our home. Seeing that he had started to get used to the water, we thought it was time to move on to a bigger pool of water. The earlier we expose him to a swimming pool, the less likely he is to be afraid of water.

Our tub is too small to allow him to move around much though

Wanting to start him off at a less crowded pool, we brought him to Yishun Safra Club on a Friday afternoon. This was our first trip to the club’s pool and the baby pool looked bigger than we have expected, and it was separated into two pools, with depths of 0.5 and 1 metre respectively.

We were glad to see sections of the baby pool shaded by the bridge overhead

Before arriving at the club, we had bought a 1-piece wet suit for Darius at Kiddy Palace. There wasn’t much selection to choose from, but we were glad to have found him a suitable piece. We did think of getting a thermal suit but couldn’t find any, so thought a wet suit would do fine too. We just needed to monitor him closely to make sure he’s not feeling cold (by checking the colour of his lips).

After donning the suit onto him by the poolside, we applied a thin layer of sunblock lotion specially for babies’ faces on his cheeks, nose and forehead. With that, I changed into my swimming attire too while Catherine stayed by the pool to take photos.

Darius is all geared up!

We were worried he might be afraid of going inside the pool so we took our time to slowly dip him into the water, with more and more of his body in contact with the water in the pool gradually. He looked a little stunned but did not complain, probably with the help of our constant words of comfort and reassurance.

I then placed him lying back and tried to encourage him to kick his legs, but his feet did not move much. Looks like he would only kick/move his feet when they come into contact with something concrete.

After he began to feel more comfortable in the water, we placed him in the neck float and dipped him into the pool again. Having getting used to the float at home, he didn’t complain either and started ‘floating’ around in the pool. His legs were still too lazy to move and kick though, and we had to constantly motivate him by moving him around, or holding him by his arms and feet.

Just floating around, literally ^^

We also tried placing him in the breast-stroke position (i.e. face forward instead of head-down) with the float still on him, and he seemed to be kicking slightly more actively in this position. He even managed to propel himself forward with his not-so-coordinated kicking motions. ^^|

"Should I do free-style or breast stroke?"

In all, Darius was in the pool for about 18 minutes, though we thought it had been longer with the things we had done (it is recommended to let babies swim in the pool for about 15 minutes each time). We were glad he was quite enjoying the swim and would be planning more swimming pool trips ahead, most likely in public swimming pools next.

Father and son enjoying themselves!

Before that though, we need to think of some way to bath him after his swim as we needed a bathtub or something to bath him in. Catherine had a difficult time bathing him in the changing room over at the club.

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