ailbhe | What an Aquanatal Class is Really Like (Reply)

Well, I arrive late, of course. That goes without saying. I walk out of the changing rooms into the main pool area, prepared to peer around until I decide in which of three possible pools the class is held... But that's not necessary, because there in front of me, like ducklings, is a straggly line of bulging ladies, each bearing a long, cylindrical, flexible polystyrene float (floats are available in pink, pale green, blue, and washed-out yellow; they all look as though they've been savaged by lions and have impressive chunks ripped out of them at intervals). I, with my qualifying bulge ahead of me, join them. The instructor gets me a float too.

We get into the pool. Nobody seems to be talking to anyone else, though people have formed little groups - I can tell that those two know each other, and those two, and those three. Surely antenatal classes are places where British reserve falls apart? Doesn't look like it. I decide against smiling nervously and saying hello; it might be considered rude.

The (male) (wearing shorts and trainers and a tshirt) (with bad teeth) instructor, whose name I don't know, instructs us to straddle our floats, so that we are sitting in the U as in a particularly supportive saddle, and scissor our legs. We bob, en masse, down the pool, heads and shoulders out of the water, the ends of the floats sticking up fore and aft - nape of neck and just under the chin, really. Most awkward. Bob, bob, bob. People crash into each other intermittently. That's fine too; we make polite British noises about it.

When we have mastered scissoring motions, we move on to running motions, and strong kicks, and frog kicks (ooooh, is my hip supposed to make that noise? It's probably just as well that I started now, rather than finding out in week 35 that my knees are this bad), and even some arms motions, though the arms motions are almost all kind of pointless. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, I keep overtaking people.

15 minutes of continuously moving against the water is quite tiring.

So's the next 15 minutes. Ow. He's talking about calf muscles. I don't have any calf muscles. Ow.

Then we climb out. Gravity kicks back in; it's amazing how much support a swimming pool and a polystyrene u-bend can give you. I feel like someone has dropped a bowling ball into my abdominal cavity (well goodness me, would you look at that? I look like someone has dropped a bowling ball into my abdominal cavity! My stomach muscles are gone!) and my knees ache. We get into the shallower pool, and stand straight up at the sides (this is hip-deep for everyone else, and waist-deep for me), and stretch our right legs out in front of us, and balance our right feet on the float. I have to sink my float to achieve this, and even so the float digs into my ankle and gives me pins and needles. This had better be good for me. The instructor (whose name I still don't know) claims it's stretching our lower backs; it's definitely stretching my hamstring and calf and possibly my femur, too. Swap legs. How can I stand on a leg that's fizzing away madly with pins and needles? Never mind, never mind...

Finally we get to relax, float about aimlessly, and crash into each other some more. I've managed to speak to someone - I said "This is very silly. Imagine what an anthropologist would make of it?" as we bobbed on our floats from one end of the pool to the other (she laughed, but I couldn't tell whether it was a "what a nutter!" laugh or a "what a wit!" laugh), and I said "oops, sorry," a couple of times as I crashed into people. I can tell I'm destined to be a socialite, flitting to mother and baby groups, after-playschool knitting marathons, that kind of thing.

I made the serious mistake of thanking the instructor on the way out. No-one else did. Have I ostracised myself forever?

Heavily pregnant British ladies are just as modest in communal showers as ordinary British ladies, by the way. And some of them managed to go through the whole class and shower without getting their hair or makeup wet.

After class, I felt revitalised and rejuvenated, and I made lots of necessary phonecalls before I keeled over and slept on the sofa for two hours. I'll go again next week; it's probably good for me.