How it all began - Part I - Swimming

One day in 2009 when I was pregnant with our third child I went to an I-MAX film in Richmond, Virginia with our two other children. It was about dolphins and a woman was just swimming free in the ocean with them. I thought “I’ve never learned how to swim!”. So when we returned to town I signed up for six semi-private swim lessons at our local YMCA. As a child I was the kid at the pool who only held onto the wall. I was never interested in swimming and did NOT like it. I never understood why people wanted to go to the pool and how they could ever consider that fun! After six lessons I decided to sign up for a YMCA morning class called Stroke-O-Nomics taught by Pat Bateman.

At this point I could NOT swim across a lane in the pool and I could NOT put my head in the water. One day the swim coach Pat Bateman said “You know Kimberly, it would help if you would put your head in the water”.  I have to say looking back it was quite crazy to sign up for this class when I could NOT swim at all. The lane against the wall was MINE. I know there were days I walked in and the coach could see the panic in my face when the wall lane was full. Clearly I needed the wall to grasp hold of! There was also a pair of fins there that belonged to the YMCA but they were also MINE. Horror set in on my face several times when someone was using MY fins. Finally the coach just wrote my name on them. They sit there still at the Y with "Kim" written on them. 

December 2009 Pregnant with Thijs. I was so big the 

OBGYN was showing my belly off to the other doctors!

At this point I was around 6 months pregnant and tried to stay in the water until I was just so big I couldn’t do it comfortably. So after a couple months of the class I stopped, had our third baby at the end December of 2009 and returned around March of 2010 after having had a third C-Section. Wow was my pregnancy swimsuit stretched out when I tried wearing it again!! I still wore that sucker for some time but it was really in stitches! At this point in 2010 I still had not learned to make it across the lane. I’m not really sure why I was even going to this class but the coach was so much fun I just kept coming. I didn’t have any goals. I wasn’t in any hurry.