In 1992, I took a trip to California with my husband and baby. I couldn’t wait to share my love of swimming with my baby girl. I had thought she, at 5 months, must have had memories of being in the womb. Surely, she was a natural swimmer.

She couldn’t swim at all. She didn’t even kick or move her arms. I became terrified.

A few years later, we had our second child, a baby boy. We lived in a townhouse complex with a pool, and it was the hottest summer ever. We were at the pool daily. My little girl was afraid of the water and chose to spend her time outside of the pool. The baby was the opposite. He had no fear at all and tooled around the pool in a baby inner tube. We had neighbors that had three young children that could all swim–including their 1 year old son. She suggested blowing over the baby’s mouth and nose, causing them to inhale and hold their breath. She even tried that with my baby, and it worked, but I couldn’t do it right. She was the one that gave me the baby inner tube, though, and the baby loved it.

One day while the two of us were in the pool, I saw my three year old daughter fall in the shallow end of the pool. I rushed over and pulled her out by the head, terrified. She was fine, but shaken up a bit. We had taken baby and me swim classes at the Y the summer before, and I’d learned enough to know that babies can’t take real Y swim lessons until they’re 3. They couldn’t take Red Cross swim lessons until 5. I remembered how I never learned how to swim at the Y, but finally made the connection in Red Cross lessons. I waited until she was 5.

She was really scared of the water by the time we started.

To be continued. . .