Water can be a great aid in the postnatal months. After all, your baby has spent most of her life in water in the womb and is still perfectly adapted to an aquatic environment. For most babies, being in the familiar medium of warm water is soothing, comforting and relaxing and bathing is a pleasurable addition to your daily activities.

      Babies usually enjoy being in water tremendously. It is beneficial and is an enjoyable way for them to exercise in the early months. Some researchers such as Igor Tjarkovsky, go further and claim that time spent in water enhances the baby’s development dramatically, since they are better adapted to life in water in the months after birth than on land.

      Tjarkovsky has observed that the movements babies use in the early months make far more sense in water where they have greater agility. He believes that when babies are taught to retain their aquatic ability from birth they adapt more easily and earlier to life on land and both crawl and walk much sooner.

      While Tjarkovsky’s ideas fascinate and interest many people, his methods of ‘water training’ babies are widely criticised because they override the baby’s feelings and unnecessarily forceful, taking the baby to extremes.

   There are alternative ways of introducing swimming to babies which involve gentle participation and co-operative play between parent and baby, so that the baby’s response and feelings always come first.

      Learning to swim at an early age is possible but should not be a priority or an inflexible goal. Gentle teaching methods, which stimulate the baby’s natural joy of learning and need to explore, are better than a system of training imposed on the child regardless of his or her willingness to participate. Babies also develop perfectly well without water experience and there is plenty of time to learn water skills.

      Your baby’s happiness and security, trust and enjoyment of being with you in water regularly are far more important than learning to swim in infancy.

      However, it is possible for babies to swim before they can crawl or walk. You may enjoy offering your baby this possibility if she enjoys being in water. ‘Baby Swim’ classes are now a popular option at most swimming pools and there are many specially trained and qualified ‘baby swim’ instructors.

      If you want to encourage your baby to swim, it is best to start before six months when babies have an automatic ability to hold their breath under water. This is known as the ‘dive reflex’ and babies share this capacity with other aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals.

      For parents who are very confident, secure and at home in water, it is possible to encourage the ‘dive reflex’ from birth until three months in the bath at home. Others who are less confident, should wait until they have the guidance of an expert at three months. To begin with, there is a great deal to be gained from spending time together, simply bathing in water in the early weeks.