Basic instinct helps babies to splash

ORLA Jennings has always had a fear of water. She never learned to swim as a child and spent the last couple of decades avoiding swimming pools.

But two years ago she became a mother and was determined her son would be at ease around water so when he was just 11 weeks old, she let go of him in a swimming pool.

This isn’t as dramatic as it sounds because although the Dublin woman did let her baby float by himself, he was under the watchful eye of the Water Babies swimming teachers at his first Splish Slash class.