Baby swimming classes

[Disgruntledpelicanlady]

Hi
Baby due next month and starting to look at baby swimming classes as some near us have a waiting list.
The three options available locally seem to be:

• waterbabies
• puddleducks
• the Rebecca Adlington baby classes

Does anyone have experience with any of them?
They seem similarly priced - is one better than the others? Why?

We don't want to do it long term necessarily but would like the guidance and support of an organised class for taking her swimming while she's still tiny. Once we're a bit more confident we can just take her to the baby pool at our gym when we like.

Both my DC have done Waterbabies. DC1 has done all 17 chapters, DC2 is around chapter 11.

We’re happy with it, the only problems have been down to the pool breaking and issues getting parts to fix it. Lessons missed have been rescheduled or refunded without quibble.

I've tried any of the others, I think if you’re happy you won’t move so there’s few people that have first hand experience of all of them.

We do water babies and really enjoy it. Started at 12 weeks and DD is almost one now. Whilst it's expensive I do think the skills they teach are so valuable. DD absolutely loves the water now. Someone from our NCT group does puddleducks and hearing her talk about it, it sounds very similar. So I'd think about which days/times/locations are most convenient for you. For what it's worth we do 8.30am which was painful to begin with but I love it now, we are awake anyway, DD comes home for a mammoth nap and then we still have the rest of the day ahead of us.

We do Puddle Ducks and it’s been really great. The instructors are all fab, good customer service and a few £ cheaper than Water Babies. Also, if you miss a class, they give you a ‘courtesy class’ voucher which means you can attend a different class to make up for the one you missed. I believe only Puddle Ducks do this.

Thank you everyone!
I like the idea of the courtesy voucher from puddleducks

I know this was a few weeks ago but thought I'd chip in.

Of those 3 I only have experience with Waterbabies. Some people absolutely love it and those kids get a lot from it I think. However, my son hated it and got more and more panicked by every lesson: there is a lot of 'underwater swimming' which, obviously as a young baby, they aren't in control of and some find that they lose, rather than gain, water confidence from this. Although people will tell you you don't have to do the dunking, to be honest there's not much else to do and the lessons do seem a bit pointless when you're not doing that bit!
I would say no harm trying Waterbabies but it is a bit Marmite.

Shortly after we stopped Waterbabies we started the local leisure centre parent and baby / toddler classes which were loads of fun and involved much more variety and were, IMO, great at encouraging putting the face in (blowing bubbles etc) while leaving it all up to the children themselves. I loved it - plus was cheaper and rolling classes so ran over the summer too instead of just term time.

Since then we continued with local leisure centre classes - progress wasn't massively rapid but he loved it. We also did a stint of lessons at a company that teach Swim-Float-Swim (look up the method) and I thought they were amazing - although if you think Waterbabies is pricey... Ha ha! That had my son properly swimming 12m or so within 2 lessons (age 4 and I could tell he was ready).

Follow your instincts though and do whatever you and your baby enjoy - because exposure and fun is really what's important when they are tiny.