This morning I took my 15 month old son to swimming for the first time (mine, not his). It was an interesting experience to say the least.

Last night, my wife went over all the finer details with me: Pack the bag, starts at 8:45, get him ready, get yourself ready etc…

“Oh, and don’t poo in the pool!”

I’d heard that from her before. Apparently if a baby poos in the pool, the whole centre is shutdown for 8 hours while the filter is cleaned. Ok, got it, don’t poo.

After getting up this morning, we got the poo out of the way – all good. About 30 minutes later my wife says, “I don’t know if he’s done another one”. We check, nothing there…

My wife left for work, we finished getting ready and off to the pool we went. We’re the first ones there, in the heated hydrotherapy pool. I started getting his stuff ready, towel, bathers, swimming nappy.

I took his clothes off, then his nappy and just as I’m putting the old nappy in the bag, I feel something against my foot…

He’s done a poo! Straight after the nappy came off this little thing dropped to the floor and rolled over to hit the side of my foot. AAAARRRGGGHH!!

Luckily, as we were the only ones still in the room I was able to retrieve and dispose of it without being seen! And it went no where near the pool, so we didn’t have to evacuate the centre.

That scare out of the way, it was time for class. This part went off without a hitch. He’s a confident little boy in the water, not phased by going under at all. He was distracted for a bit after seeing a Thomas the Tank Engine toy amongst the teacher’s props.

When the class finished it really hit home that I was the only dad in the pool. I obviously knew this intellectually, but the reality of it was apparent by the use of change rooms.

There are three change rooms in this particular section of the centre. One is a unisex, with a picture of a man, woman and child. One is female, with a picture of a woman and child. The one down the end looked to my like a male room, with a picture of a man and a boy.

Women went into all three!

They must be so used to only having other mothers in the classes that they take over the whole place! I’d been warned this might be the case, so I ended up just putting on a dry shirt and changing my son.

So all in all it was an eventful morning, so much so that he fell asleep on me on the couch after we got home 🙂