Missoula News

Column: Savagemama

Swimming Toward Confidence: Mama’s First Baby Swim Lessons

By Jennifer Savage, 6-24-07

This week I took Eliza to swimming lessons. We arrived at the pool fifteen minutes early Monday morning, swim suits under our clothes, emergency contacts in hand. When I opened the door to the new indoor pool with its waterslides and cages of kick boards and noodles, a fear of rejection rose up in me like it was the first day of high school. I didn’t know a soul that morning at the pool and I stood, Eliza on my hip, fully dressed waiting for someone to tell me what to do.

Thankfully, someone did. Carley. She was our teacher. I think she must have been about 17 with a bright smile and plenty of kid songs at her disposal. She also wore two bathing suits, one on top of the other, and I never figured out why.

“Are you here for the tots class?” she asked me as I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I was dangerously close to having to ask someone (anyone) for help. “We’re meeting right over there in just a few minutes. Do you have your suit on?”

“Yes,” I said sounding like a shy 13-year-old.

“Great,” she said. “We’ll meet you over there in a few.”

I found a chair and piled our bag and towels onto it. I sat Eliza on the concrete floor and twisted her out of her shirt, then her shorts. I quickly took off my own shirt and jeans, picked up my baby and turned to face the other moms in the swimming pool. When I saw them, a streak of panic zipped up my spine. That kind of panic that comes to you in dreams when you’ve gone to work naked except I wasn’t naked, I was in a bikini. And all of the other moms were practically covered from neck to knee.

As I treaded into the water to join our class I looked around and not one other mother in the place was wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Just me. All the other mothers seemed to be taking cues from the same fashion trend. Ill-fitting plastic-type shorts layered over a dated one-piece bathing suit. They all seemed to know that this was the swimming lesson uniform for moms. I somehow missed the memo. So I got under the water as quickly as I could.

Carley told us to circle up and taught us a few songs that involved lots of up and out of the water, some splashing and some kicking. Eliza thought the singing of these songs was the best thing that has ever happened to her. When it was time for us to play on our own I swam, neck deep, with Eliza, over to the other side of the pool. 

For the record I’m not a shy person. I’m not shy about my body either. I never really have been. I wore a two-piece that day because it’s the only bathing suit I own and I’ve owned for six years. I’ve worn it in-marathon-Mission-mountain shape, I’ve worn it nine months pregnant and I wear it now post pregnancy, saggy and skinny. I honestly didn’t think about it before turning around at the pool and seeing all the other moms covered up.

And, I don’t have trouble sparking up conversations with strangers. I make it my personal business to introduce friends to other friends because they should know each other. We have a calendar by our phone not to keep track of doctor’s appointments or meetings but to keep track of where we are having dinner and with whom on any given week. We, like so many other people in Missoula, have an amazing community of friends and we love to see them. So much so that sometimes we have to make ourselves stay at home so as not to wear ourselves out.

When I was a kid my dad used to joke that I’d put my hands in my pockets when I was feeling shy. He did it too and it became a running joke as I got other. That day at the pool my hands were in my metaphorical pockets. It was new territory; unfamiliar ground and I clammed up like an unsure teenager who didn’t have anyone to sit with at lunchtime. At the pool that day, I couldn’t seem to remember my wonderful community. I was intimidated by the other mothers. I was sure they knew so much more than I do about this whole baby-raising thing and positive they were silently judging me in my two-piece swim suit. 

As we were coming back together for another round of songs, a little boy from the side of the pool threw a plastic fish and nailed me right in the head. He meant to do it. He stood waiting for my reaction.

“Hey! That isn’t nice!” I said swimming over to the side of the pool a little taken aback by how much I sounded like my stepmother. “Don’t throw things at other people! You could have hit the baby.” He seemed totally unaffected, mumbled “sorry” then, very nicely, handed Eliza the toy he’d thrown at me.

“Thank you,” I said and he ran off to throw other things at other people. But just like that, I was out of my shell. I swam back over to our class a little more confident having stood up to the bully kid and struck up a conversation with the only other mother in the group with a baby, not a toddler.

“That kid’s been doing that all morning,” she said.  We chatted about how clearly someone needed to make him stop both sure that our children, who were happily slapping the water, would never do anything like that. We talked about flying with babies and where we were from and I breathed a little easier. I’d made a friend. Someone who would probably let me sit at her lunch table had we trekked down to the cafeteria after third period.

“How old is she?” my new friend asked.

“Ten months,” I said.

“It only took ten months to get back in a bikini, huh? I still have a little way to go but I’m almost there. Then I’m going to wear mine too,” she said.

I didn’t go into the fact that I only own one bathing suit or that I hadn’t even thought about what I was wearing until I got to the pool. I just smiled and nodded.

“That will be awesome,” I said. I have to admit that for a few brief seconds I silently hoped that that transformation would happen during the next four days, while we were taking swimming lessons together, so I wouldn’t be the only mom in a bikini. But then I found some shred of confidence and remembered that I was comfortable in my bathing suit and I wouldn’t be in the shorts-one-piece uniform.

Luckily, Eliza had no idea her mama was such a wreck that first day at swimming lessons. She splashed, she laughed, she smiled at Carley, she chewed on some pool toy, she pooped in her swim diaper. She was totally oblivious to all of my anxieties.

The next day, during one of the songs, Carley told me to blow in Eliza’s face and put her under the water. Eliza came up gasping but smiled when it was all over. At swimming lessons she was learning not to be afraid and maybe, little by little, I was too.

Jennifer Savage writes about being a Western mom on her own blog here on NewWest.Net. Read more from “Savagemama” at www.newwest.net/savagemama.

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