First, cherish that daughter, and do what you can with her and your wife. Those are the important things right now. Watch her smile, her lift her head, turn over, start to crawl, become aware, and enjoy every moment of it. This is the experience of a lifetime, and diving pales in comparison.
Diving is a sport, and activity. It is great to dive, and I have been doing it for a very long time. BUT, it is not life itself; your daughter is life itself. When my sons were young, I enjoyed doing everything I could with them. As they grew older, I could dive more often. But I don’t travel-dive; I dive locally, where it doesn’t affect much in the way of family life.
I also did a lot of swimming, and pool work. At one point I became finswimming director for the Underwater Society of America. Did you know there is a sport called finswimming? I did that instead of diving sometimes. It got me in the water (the North Umpqua River) and kept me in condition to dive. I would use the long free diving fins to do finswimming in the river, testing my skills against the current, then returning to my entry point. I’d swim with a light wetsuit, fins, mask and snorkel (finswimming snorkels are front-mount, and go over your forehead, but most times I used a regular snorkel). If interested, the World Underwater Federation (CMAS) sanctions finswimming competitions worldwide, and the Underwater Society of America is the sanctioning body in the USA.
https://www.finswimmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/NAP_Regles_V2017_01_shortVersion.pdf#:~:text=Finswimming in Open Water (OW) For safety and,second yellow card is shown to the swimmer.
That way, I could get a workout and still remain in one of the activities associated with diving. I even bought a monofin and get a bit proficient on it, but not like the European and Asian competitors.
This is Michael Phelps trying out finswimming.
This shows the 400m immersion finswimming event in 2018.
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That’s just some ideas for 6 months to a year down the road. In the meantime, enjoy that daughter!
SeaRat