What a scary feeling it must have been to have no connection to your baby during your pregnancy. That is what Kristen Bell says her pregnancy was like. She said she felt no connection to her daughter, Lincoln, until after her birth.

Bell became a mother in March when she had her first child Lincoln, and all throughout her pregnancy she had one strange thought: “I just don’t know how I’m going to like her as much as I like the dogs.” Although it might be humorous now, Bell says she was serious when she made the comment to her husband.

“I kept saying to Dax in all sincerity during my pregnancy, ‘I just don’t know how I’m going to like her as much as I like the dogs.’ I was being serious,” she said. “Because I f–king love my dogs; they are my children.”

Nine months and 24 hours later, Bell says her motherly instincts kicked in, and she finally felt that connection she had been longing for. “I love people the more I know them, and I didn’t know her. It could’ve been a water bottle in my belly, that’s about how connected I felt to her during my pregnancy,” she shares. “But within about 24 hours after she came out, my hormones reset, and they reprogrammed my feelings about her.”

Like all new moms, Bell is extremely protective of her daughter, and dares someone to take pictures of her. And speaking of pictures, you will not find any of baby Lincoln on Bell or Dax’s Twitter pages, or on any other social media sites. In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Bell explains that she doesn’t want to make her daughter a public figure until she chooses to do so for herself.

“Dax and I realize it might make someone smile when we have sassy twitter fights, or when I tweet something that he says to me,” she explains. “I’m fully aware that it’s a tiny taste of our relationship. But the real day-to-day, we are extremely territorial of. I would really not like to see the aftermath of the first person who tries to take a picture of Lincoln. There are going to be a lot of stitches.”

Look for Bell on the cover of the December issue of Flare Magazine.

Image via Wikimedia Commons