For as far back as I can remember, I imagined what it would be like to be pregnant. I would jokingly stuff a balloon under my shirt, or push out my stomach while standing sideways in front of the mirror, and picture what it would be like to be growing a human being inside my tummy.

When I became pregnant, I was surprised about how I felt less like I was growing a person and more like an alien was taking over my body. In our first ultrasound, my baby looked like a teeny tiny jellybean, so when I pictured the little one growing in my body - it was sort of just a bean with a face.

Throughout my pregnancy, I looked for ways to bond with my baby so that he/she/it was less like something that was happening to me and more like someone that I was getting to know. Here are some things that helped me bond with my baby-to-be:

1. Talking to the baby. According to studies, babies can hear sounds as soon as 16 weeks, and start responding to sounds at around 24 weeks (www.whattoexpect.com). Knowing that I had a little companion throughout my pregnancy was one of the easiest ways to bond with her.

2. Listening to music together. I created a birth playlist to listen to during my pregnancy and labor - it is a compilation of songs that would remind me of my future child and songs that she would react to while in the womb.

3. Journal, journal, journal. For the first twelve weeks of my pregnancy, I wrote my baby a letter every week explaining to her what was happening to her body and why it was significant. I told her which fruit she was the same size as and that she was growing eyes that she would someday use to watch sunsets and admire the ocean. As my pregnancy progressed, I only journaled the “big” moments like finding out her gender or missing her due date. These twenty or so pages of writing are now some of my most prized possessions, and I know that they will be invaluable to my daughter when she is older.

4. Using her name. Our child having an identity before she was born was something that happened naturally. We decided on her first and middle name the day that we found out her gender at 15 weeks. Nearly all of the cards and gifts at her baby shower, as well as my journal entries, are made out to Mila Skye. If you wait to know the gender, or wait to name your baby, choose a nickname that you can call him/her throughout the pregnancy. Mila was referred to as Poppy for a long time because she was the size of a poppyseed when we found out we were pregnant with her.

5. Pushing back. I am pretty sure that I gave birth to an Olympic swimmer or kung fu master, a fact that I was sure about for months before she was born. I could literally see her kicking me throughout the day. This quickly became a game that we played in which she would kick and I would gently push back. Sometimes, if I didn’t feel a ton of movement, I would push first, and she would kick in return. This helped me to feel so connected to her, especially knowing that I was the only person who could play this game with her any time of the day.

Now, as I look back at my pregnancy, I see something that I didn’t realize about her during her nine+ months in utero: she is the same person today as the person I carried inside my body. She has the same spirit, level of intensity, and taste in music as she did while she was being formed. The alien jellybean that I only knew as a miniature, phantom soccer player, were indications of who she would someday be. I am grateful that I didn’t wait until she was born to begin to get to know her - I would have missed out on knowing the earliest version of who she would become.

By Allie Garcia