Babies in the water in Oulu? 65 Degrees North dropped in on Gisela Tauriainen's lessons to find out more.
On a Monday at 12 pm, a group of pensioners have gathered in front of Zimmari, the swimming hall next to the shopping centre Zeppelin in Kempele. A rainy wind is approaching, and when an employer of the swimming bath eventually unlocks the doors at 12 pm, they all flock in, followed by two school groups.
I’m here to meet Gisela Tauriainen. German, from Stuttgart, Gisela was the first to offer baby swimming courses in Oulu, in 1982, arriving at a time when foreigners were barely existent here. Although retired now, she still instructs parents who want to acquaint their child with water as early as possible.
Gisela considers the encounter with water one of the most natural for a baby. “A baby spends nine months surrounded by amniotic fluid in the mother’s womb before it is born,” she says. “It’s a huge shock for the baby when the surrounding element changes from liquid to air. Baby swimming is about getting to know water as a natural element - but it’s something they already know.”
In her lessons, Gisela avoids swimming aids that keep babies above the water level, such as wings or flippers. “The baby should learn to see water for what it is: both dangerous and pleasant,” she declares. “It would only harm the feeling for it if anything like that was used.”
Today, Gisela is teaching Célia from France, who arrives with her ten-month-old daughter Cléa, and for the first time, Cléa’s grandmother, who wants to see how her grandchild is doing in the water. As Célia draws Cléa gently through the pool, the little girl looks content. Gisela tells Clea’s mummo –in Finnish– that moving water always feels nicer to babies than still.
One of the first exercises for Cléa in the classes was diving. Gisela pushes Cléa to Célia, who pushes her back, but the second time, Gisela’s movement not only takes the baby forward but down, pushing her head underwater. What seems cruel at first to me doesn’t seem to bother Cléa at all: she comes up to the surface and her mother’s arms as if it was the most natural event in the world.
Babies, it turns out, have reflexes that make them excellent divers: they keep their eyes wide open, and they don’t try to breath under water.
Gisela tells me it’s vital for a baby swimming instructor to consider the parents. Fathers, she states, are usually more daring than mothers, but if either are afraid of an exercise, they don’t do it. Nothing, of course, is done against the will of the baby.
“You can give a little push here and there, but nothing more,” says Gisela. “And in most cases the rule of two tries applies. When you do a new exercise, the baby might be a bit scared at first – it doesn’t know what’s happening. The second time, it either notices the exercise isn’t so bad after all, or likes it, or doesn’t – but usually by then the baby is fine with it.”
As I watch, Cléa learns to cling to the edge of the swimming pool, and keep herself above the surface. This doesn’t present many difficulties, and her little hands have a good grip on the side on first go – giving me time to ask her instructor how she started the whole thing.
“I brought the idea with me from my stay in the US in 1980/81. I’m an enthusiastic swimmer, and interested in developmental psychology. I taught my own baby already and was fascinated about it. So I organised my own baby swim courses in Oulu in the beginning of 1982, shortly after courses had started in Helsinki.”
In the beginning, opinions were not always approving.
“People criticised it a lot,” says Gisela. “They said it was unsanitary, that the babies would pee in the water. And they thought baby swimming was something ambitious parents do to make their kids super-children. All these reproaches have their origins in a lack of knowledge.”
The courses soon became very popular, however, even without any formal advertisement. Word of mouth spread, making it difficult at times to find enough swimming pool time for all the courses.
Apart from the baby swimming, the former kindergarten teacher ran the German-Finnish daycare centre for fifteen years, and gave Afro and Jazz dance classes. When I ask her why she moved to the North, she cite a German documentary about Finland she saw as a child. “I saw this programme that showed the Finnish summer and thought, awww, when I’m grown up, I’m going there!” she laughs.
When she first came to Finland, fifty years ago, Oulu didn’t necessarily look like a centre of cultural possibilities for a foreigner, she says.
“When I came here, Oulu seemed a sedate little town consisting of wooden houses. Even at this time people did speak English, but they were even shier than nowadays and wouldn’t admit to knowing a foreign language if they didn’t speak it fluently. There were very few foreigners and some studied or worked at the university as scientists – they were looked up to most of the time; people were always saying they were ‘only Finns’ after all.”
While according to Gisela a lot has changed over the decades, what’s stayed the same is that every baby gets tired at some point. While Cléa has showed an enormous amount of energy, diligently smacking the water surface, she closes her eyes as soon as she’s put into her baby seat.
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On a Monday at 12 pm, a group of pensioners have gathered in front of Zimmari, the swimming hall next to the shopping centre Zeppelin in Kempele. A rainy wind is approaching, and when an employer of the swimming bath eventually unlocks the doors at 12 pm, they all flock in, followed by two school groups.