How can I make swimming easier?

[AleaEim]

Hi, I’ve been taking my dd to swimming lessons but lately I’m finding changing her afterwards more and more difficult as she can now crawl off the changing station which is dangerous. I’ve tried giving her snacks and toys while I get changed which helps but only for so long. What are other people doing? It’s at a leisure centre and we can’t take strollers into the changing rooms so I’ve nowhere safe to put her. Saying that, I don’t think it’s enforced and I’ve seen other parents take the pram in.

Appreciate any tips as I’m losing my mind taking her now.

Take one of those bath seats (the ones that look like a swing seat) and put her in that with some snacks.

And get changed really quickly!

Change her on the floor. I used to strip off their wet stuff and wrap up in a towel like a baby burrito, leaving one arm out so they could eat a high value snack. They can sit or lie down, whatever. While they are eating that (make sure it's a good one to keep interest) you strip off and get dried and dressed. No shower or faffing. Then they'll be pretty much dry and you can just whack a nappy on and dress them and go.

Good idea, I would have to bring an extra towel for her to lie on. The annoying thing is there’s barely any room in the lockers so I’ve been trying to minimise what I take in, suppose I could get two lockers.

That’s a good idea but I don’t drive so wouldn’t have enough room to bring it with me. Also, it wouldn’t fit in the lockers there.

I used to take kids beach towel with hood. Small towel to sit them on. Then just towel on them and sit them down with snacks whilst I got dressed first. They could crawl around changing cabin but couldn’t escape so no problem. The snacks usually gave me a few minutes to speed dress.

Then get them changed on floor

Would a fold up seat like this be easy for you to take?

My leisure centre has a couple of family changing rooms that have a little fold out seat with straps attached to the wall so you can put small children in safely, have you looked around all the changing rooms to check for anything like that? It took a while before I noticed them at ours, I was using a small changing room with a tiny bench when we first started swimming

Oh that’s great, maybe I’ll get one. Towel on floor seems like a good idea though, the floors are a bit dirty so was avoiding putting her down there. I’ll have another look around the changing rooms to see what there is but I’m already going into the family rooms and there’s nothing only a changing table.