Merbabies Swim School

I was keen to take my daughter swimming from an early age, but I found the baby swim classes to be fairly expensive, at inconvenient times, and not really aligned with my gentle parenting style. When trying to arrange lessons it seemed really hard to contact people or get information on prices and times. This wasn’t the way I wanted to engage with a brand, so I took my daughter swimming myself, and was thrilled at how quickly she was learning and progressing in the water and how much we enjoyed our fun, relaxed sessions together.

After my second baby was born, I looked into classes again, but having moved out to West Lothian, I was once again struck by the lack of good quality, affordable, fun lessons which promoted themselves as gentle and baby-led. We eventually found a local lesson with an independent teacher, but when my youngest was six months old - just as I was contemplating my return to work - the teacher said she was moving on. I saw an amazing opportunity and took over from her. I undertook intense training, became a qualified baby to preschool swim teacher and started Merbabies Swim School.

Our ethos is teach with love, learn through play and this is central to everything that we do"

Merbabies classes teach life saving skills, water confidence and builds the foundations for early swimming, through a gentle yet dynamic learn to swim programme. Our ethos is teach with love, learn through play and this is central to everything that we do, and HOW we do it. We don’t teach children to read by throwing a book a them, so why would we teach children to swim by throwing water at them? Instead we teach these skills through gentle, child led lessons, where children are encouraged to play, explore and enjoy the pool, through creative and imaginative lessons, using toys, songs, games and sensory play. The pool is an amazing environment for bonding and building trust and increasing non verbal communication skills. Babies love praise, attention and snuggles with lots of eye contact, and again, this is something we really capitalise on in class..

Swimming is great for social, emotional, physical and cognitive development; with improved sleeping, feeding and development linked to early swimming. It’s also a great activity for parents and the time together in a happy environment has clear benefits for maternal mental health.

I started teaching around 30 babies per week. 18 months later, five teachers teach 300+ children per week, at eight pools. Our teachers are all highly trained and have specialist qualifications in teaching baby to preschool swimming. As well as what we offer in the pool, we pride ourselves on being friendly and open. We offer easy online bookings, have transparent pricing and offer flexible payment plans. When our autumn term starts in September we are offering classes in new locations and have space for an additional 100 babies and toddlers to join us in Edinburgh and the Lothians and I am just so thrilled and delighted that our gentle, child led approach is resonating with parents. •

My 2 year old is currently splashing around in the paddling pool and sliding down into the water all by himself. This is a boy, who 7 weeks ago, would even sit down in the bath. He would scream from start to finish, washing his hair was an absolute chore. A huge thank you to Merbabies." – Sam Matheson

Excellent classes! The highlight of his week. I’ve watched my son come on leaps and bounds with his water confidence over the past couple of weeks. I’m so pleased with the quality of the classes that my daughter is going to start the baby classes next term." – Emma Archer