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A SquidKid reader, new mom, and definitely water curious posed this question to me a few days ago:

“I have a daughter who is 1-month old and am interested in starting her swimming as soon as it is safe for her … can you please tell me what might be the concerns in starting an infant swimming under 6 months? Any suggestions about taking her into a pool on my own?”

I did discuss the pro’s and con’s of starting your child early with a Part 1 entry followed up by a Part 2. These entries have received the most views on my site, but they did not include advice for infants this young.

The Pool: Take into Account the Uncontrollable Water Variables
To swim, you first have to find some water. And the type of pool facility you pick will dictate the type of swimming environment you will get.

The best place to get started is with your local phone book. You might end up calling a person who runs an infant program out her backyard or a 5,000+ members YMCA. The bigger the pool or business, the more of a balancing act the pool becomes in order to meet demands from its users. The more users, the more splashing and noise.

Pool temperature is another factor. I recommend an indoor pool that is at least 88 degrees. If the pool is outdoors, what about the sun factor? The environment needs to feel warm and soothing for your infant.

The Class or Instructor: Ask the Right Questions
Finding the right pool will also lead you down the road to finding the right class or instructor. Here is what you need to ask about infant classes:

• Infant age limits. There is a lot of controversy with starting children too young, and some facilities follow the advice given by professionals. For example, the American Academy of Pediatricians doesn’t recommend swim lessons (not swimming) until the age of 4.
• The structure of the classes. Do they offer one-on-one private instruction, or group? Infant survival, or water play? Which is better and why?

The teacher can certainly be yourself. A very helpful book I share with parents is Water Babies: Safe Starts in Swimming by Francoise Barbira Freedman. This magazine-sized book captures the spirit of infant swimming with colorful image examples, photo captions, bullet points, and sidebar boxes.

The First Skill: Be Comfortable
Swimming needs to be a fun and happy experience. Your comfort — and thus the comfort of your infant — hinges on the merging of a good pool and plan.

Remember that swimming in a natural experience. In fact, the younger the infant is the more able they will take to the water. Here are few pointers for the very curious (defined as those waiting for the Water Babies book or a class/lesson to start):

• Hold your infant in the water as you would on land. Take advantage of the fact your infant will feel a 50-80% total weight loss, meaning experiment from cradling to working into light floating with a hand under the head and another under the backside.
• Babies naturally conserve oxygen when submersed underwater. They also close off the larynx, which leads to the trachea and thus no water enters the lungs; however, the esophagus remains open, so some water can get into the stomach. Water intoxification is when too much water enters the stomach.

I’m just touching on the many, many questions related with infant swimming, which I will get to here on SquidKid. Who ever knew there would be so many variables involved in really young infant swimming? It feels like one of the only places you can control these variables is sitting in your very own bathtub. Truth be told, this is an excellent place you can start.