I just had my final swimming lesson last weekend, and I’m glad to be done with them.  I wasn’t particularly enthused when I started, as you may recall, but as the class became better acquainted with each other, and I felt reassured that the born-to-swim instructor of ours wouldn’t make me do anything I wasn’t comfortable with, I ended up having a little bit of fun after all.  In our final class we had some fun with a few games, one of which was trying to follow a pole down to touch the bottom of the pool in progressively deep water.  This was surprisingly difficult due to the pressure on our noses and ears.

Things I’ve learned and/or improved upon:

• whip kicks and breast stroke
• treading water (egg beater style!)
• front and back crawl into and out of the deep end without a flotation device
• handstands
• using goggles (until they break, anyways)

But there are many thing I haven’t improved upon too:

• breath timing
• jumping/diving into the pool
• stopping water from going up my nose

It’s disheartening for me when I seem to be getting better but I know I still have a long way to go.  And I know most of that is not because I can’t do it but because of a fear of the water itself.  Honestly, my primary motivation for continuing to attend these swimming lessons was getting to rest my pregnant body in the hot tub afterwards once a week.

At this point I’m not sold on the idea of putting myself through even more swimming classes just yet, even if I did have a little bit of fun with them.  But maybe I’ll change my mind once our little belly fruit arrives.  Until then, I’m happy staying out of the water.

S