While I was pregnant I didn’t talk to my baby in English. I talked to him in Spanish. It was a very difficult pregnancy and I had other things on my mind. I didn’t want to spend time thinking about the language that I would use to talk to him when he would be born.
If things would have happened normally, my baby would have heard me speaking in English everyday as I am a teacher and a training teacher of English and I talk many hours a day in this language. However, during my pregnancy I wasn’t working neither was I in an English speaking environment. So my son didn’t hear much English in my belly.
It is true that the reasons that I had to raise my child in a bilingual way were there, but, as I had questions about the way of doing it and I couldn’t find much information about it, I just left it aside for a while.
If my pregnancy would have been a normal one, would I have talked to my baby in my belly?
Maybe yes, I am not sure. I think that I would have talked to him when I would be on my own and maybe I would have sung some baby songs. I think that I wouldn’t have been shy singing in front of his daddy, but speaking would have been more embarrassing. Nevertheless, I don’t think I would have worried too much about doing it or not. I reckon that pregnancy is a great moment to search for information about nonnative bilingualism and learning and refreshing vocabulary that we use with babies. I don’t think that we have to start speaking all the time in nonnative English to our child when we are pregnant. It seems that what they hear from their amniotic sac is our intonation and rhythm and in my case they are very similar in English and in Spanish. As I say though, I believe it is an interesting moment to start practicing and singing.
In a future pregnancy will I talk to my baby in English?
Yes, and even more now that I am already raising a baby in a nonnative bilingual way. I also think that it will be good for my son to see that mummy talks to his little sibling in English. Maybe it is a good moment for him to start talking to him in English too. If they get used to do it soon they may feel that it is something natural and keep on doing it for a long time.
It is funny writing about a future child. I have just had my baby and it will take a loooong time to start even thinking about another one.
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