What exactly concerns you about the water quality??? It isnt dirty...its too full of chemicals to be dirty...if its the chemicals you're concerned about than really your only option is the salt water pools.. but if you are only taking your little one in the pool once or twice a week for lessons and not every day for hours at a time I wouldn't be too concerned unless you or your child has a chlorine allergy

I personally do not like public pools much. Chlorine stinks, and I hate the smell of it. it is chemicals and my sons is 17 months and have not taken him to the pool yet, but to frinds house and they have salt water pool. The water does not hurt his eyes...I do not like the public pools, I always get sick whenever I go there. My was about 2 when I took her for the 1st time and she had an ear infections and got pink eye too right away.But it is only my opinion. You can just go to and open swim with your baby, but if you want to get to know moms you can always meet moms through LWAB mom tot swim events. Youo do not have to invest in swim lessons for little ones that way. I am not sure where you are located but Kimberly organizes swims here in Newmarket.

Last summer we signed up our 4 month old for the 'Starfish' program at Garnet Community Centre (Bathurst/ Clark) through Vaughan recreation. It was great - there were only two students including us!), so it was like getting private lessons. In fact, they allowed both my husband and I to be in the pool for the lesson :)

I also took Zoey to the Thornhill Therapeutic pool for Parent & Tot swim - I did find that I would just kinda walk around in the pool holding her, not doing much else - well, I was  socialising with other LWAB moms ;)

At younger ages, the swim lessons are more about the parent learning how to safely hold baby, different hold positions, some fun games and things to do in the water (besides just holding them and swishing them around). We learnt a lot - definitely some new/ different ways of holding baby, that we would never have thought of, and use them when we swim my brother-in-law's outdoor pool.

The other girl in our class was 12 months old and obviously got more out of it than our Zoey - particularly the water safety component where they try to teach the kids to check and ask first before getting in to the water). Our instructor, Chanel (yes, like the perfume) was fantastic and is really great with kids (we got to see since she taught other ages before and after our session).

We plan on doing the next level (Duck) in the Fall at the new North Thornhill CC since it's very close to home. Hopefully we get another great instructor! It's a new facility, so it's very clean, though we didn't have any problems at the older CCs. Also, FYI NTCC has a fantastic family change room! We've been going on Sunday mornings for Parent & Tot swim and Zoey loves it, though we would like to have a bit more structured activity around our time in the pool.

Regarding the pools themselves - yes, the chlorine is strong, but you're really not in the water that long (classes are typically 30 minutes and baby gets bored/tired/ antsy after 45 minutes anyway) and you can (and should) get in the shower right afterwards to rinse off. In retrospect, both in terms of age-appropriateness for classes and concern of chlorine effects, we should have maybe waited until Zoey was 8-9 months old, but we have all thoroughly enjoyed our times in the pool with no ill effects. We figure she is really comfortable in the water now because she was introduced to pools so young.

BTW A recent study indicates that the respiratory effect of chlorine is actually more of a concern, especially if there's history in the family. You can read about it at http://www.canada.com/health/Infant+swimming+tied+lung+infection+asthma/2486744/story.html

One more opinion - it's much more difficult to go swimming with a walking, opinionated older baby/ toddler than a mostly immobile infant, so you might want to consider this too. I would *not* take Zoey swimming on my own now - I definitely need my husband to help out - this is for help in changing baby and getting yourself dressed after the swim!

In the end, it's your call - in some ways, you won't know if you/ baby like it until you try. As always, you know what's best for your baby and what you're comfortable with. Hope this helps (sorry for the long post, I do tend to get carried away).