The good news is the breathing thing is getting much better. At least for front crawl. And I'm having a lot of fun, which is good. But it looks like I've got a long way to go before I qualify for the Olympics.
Our coach is a nice guy, but I think he's kind of flummoxed by the four or so of us in the slow lane. At the start of every session, he writes down the evening's plan on the white board, and then goes through a few tips and techniques for the whole group to keep in mind with each of the strokes. And then he looks at our lane and says, "for you guys, you should... just do your best." The other lanes have long finished by the time we do a set of lengths, so he's taken to giving us slightly shorter assignments so we can actually finish on time.
Meanwhile, in the midst of this low-grade chaos, we've begun the task of learning the butterfly stroke. I can't really describe what a strange stroke the butterfly is - in part because I don't really understand. There's a lot of wriggling of the lower body, while the arms and torso flail up and down. and every person seems to describe it differently: some say it starts from the hips, others say from the chest, or neck, or head: some say there are two kicks (aka wriggles) for each arm stroke, and others say just one is fine. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is breathing: apparently, the 'fly is easier if you don't.
So the current technique I use at the moment is to come to a dead stop, lift my head to breathe in and then start moving again. Starting to move from the middle of the pool isn't so easy, as you can imagine, particularly with a stroke that needs some forward momentum, so all of this is a slow an laborious process. Wriggle wriggle, stop, breathe, wriggle wriggle, stop, breathe... So for the last two sessions, not only is the coach trying to yell helpful suggestions to me from poolside, but so are the two other lifeguards on duty. At one point I had a whole crowd of personal coaches on the edge of the pool. The whole situation is pretty hilarious, so I'm usually laughing underwater.