Barbara Walsh was first introduced to baby swimming when she took her son, Sam, to lessons in England. Here she fell in love with the concept, the classes, the cartoon characters and the social interaction with other mums (a few of whom are still amongst her closest friends). By the time Sam was onto the toddler programme, Barbara had left her part-time admin job to train up as a Water Babies instructor for the Yorkshire franchise.

When it was time for Barbara and her family, Sam and dad Adam, to head back to Barbara's homeground of Sydney, she approached Paul and Jess about starting classes here. Aqua Babies was born in October 2007, after the Walshs' welcomed baby number two: Georgia, into the family. She now attends Mummy's lessons with Daddy every Sunday!

We have thankfully enjoyed amazing success since we first started and have been really well received here in Sydney. Our clients are having a ball, there are so many dads coming on board (which is fantastic) and the most important thing of all, there are loads and loads of happy little babies playng and swimming in the water.

Whilst we are passionate believers in the importance of water confidence we also believe that swimming from birth is important for other reasons too. For instance, we think it's as important to provide as varied a range of stimuli for children under five as it is when they're older. After all, if 75% of all brain growth happens before the age of three, surely it's the ideal time to present them with as much as possible to learn from.

We’re all so very proud of the work we do at Aqua Babies. We know we've created a course that will teach your child one of life's core skills: confidence in water and, ultimately, the ability to swim. In 2008, within the space of ten weeks we had three two-year olds save themselves when accidentally falling into water - and that made us immensely proud.

We hope you'll find our website useful and look forward to maybe seeing you at some of our classes soon.