Most babies start swimming early with an cutsie little Mommy and Me swimming class, right? We jumped at the chance to take one in Portland that has it's whole focus set toward teaching babies survival swimming, and babies under a year old "graduate" by floating on their backs after being in the water on their own. Sounds intense, right?
You have no idea...
So Billy and I signed up for this class with our friend Hazel and her mom, and we each did this intro tour before the class started. It was very specific. No shoes in the building. No cameras. No cell phones. No entering without showering. No disposable diapers. No Poop in the pool. NO POOP was a biggie.
I took our little folder of guidelines and my washable pool diaper and we were set to start the next week!
That next week Billy's silly little growing digestive system decided not to poop all week. ALL WEEK. Each day I was getting more and more nervous, not only because he seemed uncomfortable, but because we had swimming on Friday. Friday morning I called on all my mommy friends and we tried most of their tricks, a warm bath, warm pack on the tummy, tummy massage, kicking legs, "assertive" wiping with a diaper change... we tried them all. I was getting so nervous!
We got to swimming and put on this very specific swim diaper required for class, and me in my mommy one piece (don't worry there was a mom there in a teeny bikini with a tramp stamp, with her teeny 5 week old there, too) and we followed all of the rules. No shoes, showered, we were ready... but still no poop. I was most nervous about the impending blowout... I just knew we would be dismissed from the pool and they would have to shut the pool down and cancel classes to clean it.
So there we were sitting in the chairs waiting to be invited to the pool and Billy and I were looking around at the classmates and getting accustomed to the pool. Billy got very relaxed and peed down my legs while the teacher was talking... we both pretended it didn't happen. He kept looking around like normal and I was thankful the shower made my legs wet so maybe no one would notice a thing... they didn't, so we got in the pool like nothing happened. ;)
In the end Hazel got dismissed for crying :( This made Billy and I even more nervous! We made it through class without getting kicked out for having a blowout, in fact, without any poop at all!
As I breathed a sigh of relief as we were getting our normal clothes back on, I realized I forgot to take out my breast pads and they were GIGANTIC full of pool water. They exploded the inside gel all over the entire inside of my swim suit! It. was. disgusting. So I was trying to wipe off with wipes and put on normal clothes while Billy started sobbing because he was hungry and tired. So we ran to the car and I realized I did not have any other breast pads at all. The pool water ones were it. So I was feeding hungry Billy and my new clean clothes then had huge breast milk circles on it. I couldn't have kept my suit on because it was full of gel. S.O.L. Normally it wouldn't have been a big deal but we had plans out with Brian's family for dinner right after so we were not heading home to get cleaned up. It was the day that wouldn't end.
Luckily we survived the pool without a blow out, and luckily Hazel's mom had a pair of breast pads I could use for the evening. And luckily, Billy unloaded the next day and was much more comfortable. :) Looking back, this 20 minute swim class was a source of major stress and hopefully will only get better, Holy Shit.
