Wondering if your little bundle of joy will be a boy or a girl? While
the only accurate way to find out your
baby's gender during pregnancy
is from your doctor But you could also imagine what you like doing all the time as to a boy or a girl character if you take part in eating poultry and venison, and talking
about jousting and knight stuff? Well, then you’re obviously carrying a
boy. Like dancing and music? It’s a girl. Do you go with this?
Sure, it’s not the most scientific of determinations, but for women
living in a world before ultrasounds, there was no way to tell just what
or who or how many were in there. Modern technology has made a window
into a place which, for hundreds of thousands of years, only speculation
illuminated.
So, if you don’t have the benefit of that window (which, by the way,
isn’t always clear), how did you tell whether you were carrying a boy or
a girl? And perhaps even more important, could you choose which?
Before we get to the good stuff, here’s a quick Bio 101 primer on how
it really works: Human sex
differentiation is dictated by the XX/XY
system. The egg cell (we’ll call her Sally) contains one lady-making X
chromosome; the sperm (let’s call him Harry) can carry either an X or a Y
chromosome. When Harry meets Sally (see what we did there?), whether
they’ll make a boy or a girl is dependent on which chromosome Harry’s
packing.
The Y chromosome stimulates testis formation in the fetus, and
thus male sexual development; no Y chromosome, the gonads become ovaries
and you’ve got yourself a girl. Pretty simple (except when there’s an
anomaly, such as Klinefelter’s syndrome, an extra X chromosome attached
to the XY that can manifest in decreased fertility, increased breast
tissue, and other ways). The sex of the infant is set, though possibly
not in stone, as soon as the sperm fertilizes the egg, but the sexual
bits don’t develop for several weeks. Most parents don’t find out their
baby’s gender until the 20-week scan, if they do find out at all.
1. Ways to Game the System
So making a boy or a girl the old fashioned way is a bit of a
crapshoot—it’s whichever sperm survives the cervical gauntlet. Nowadays,
fertility specialists can make and identify embryos of either sex, but
it’s generally frowned on (and illegal in the UK, except in cases in
which you have a serious genetic condition that you risk passing on to a
child of a certain sex).
But not really having a ton of control over the situation didn’t and doesn’t stop women from trying to game the system. The Distaff Gospels
is a collection of medieval European women’s medical lore recorded in
the late 15th century; it’s also responsible for the above gender
stereotyping about jousting and dancing. The Gospels
recommended having the man turn his face towards the east during sex if
the couple is trying for a boy; to have sex in the morning if you’re
aiming for a boy and in the evening and night if you want a girl; or not
to have sex right after a meal if you want a boy. Another medieval
source recommends that the gentleman quaff a cocktail made of red wine
and pulverized rabbit’s womb, while the lady do shots of red wine and
dried rabbit’s testicles.
Of course, if you want to try for a particular sex (say, if you’re
modern royalty tasked with producing a son and heir), then there are
couple things that you can do. There’s the Shettles method, based on the
notion that Y-toting sperm are faster swimmers than X-toting sperm, but
don’t live as long. If you want a boy, then, you should try to have sex
as close as possible to ovulation, to give the male sperm a fighting
chance; if you want a girl, you should have sex two to four days before
you ovulate. There’s also the Whelan method, which is kind of the
opposite: If you want a boy, you should have sex four to six days before
you’re about to ovulate and if you want a girl, two to three days
before. The Whelan method is predicated on the idea of basal body
temperature affecting sex determination.
Once the egg is fertilized, however, how do you know what you’ve got in there without the benefit of a window?
2. The way you walk
Walk with your right foot first, you’re having a boy; the opposite, you’re having a girl. This was according to the Distaff Gospels
again—a wonderful source for medically questionable stunners, some of
which were, if not exactly prescient or accurate, at least
well-intentioned: For example, the Gospels cautioned that if at
the hour of conception, “neither feels affectionate love for the other,
a female of bitter disposition is born.”
3. The salt test
The Gospels again: “When a woman is carrying a child and she
wishes to know whether she is carrying a boy or a girl, you should
sprinkle salt on her head while she is sleeping, so gently that she is
unaware of it. When she wakes, note what name she says first. If she
says a man’s name it will be a boy and if she says a woman’s name it
will be a girl.” Or maybe she’ll just wake up saying the name of the
weirdo who put salt on her head.
4. Ask elderly woman
“If a pregnant woman wants to know the gender of the child she is bearing, listen to her and she will reveal it herself,” the Gospels
said. “When she asks: ‘What do you think I am carrying?’, if you say:
‘A lovely boy’, and she does not blush, you should know for sure that
she will have a girl.”
Blushing aside, there is some evidence that women have a sort of
mother’s intuition about what’s going on in there: According to The Sun,
a study found that women with no prior knowledge of their baby’s gender
guess the sex correctly 71% of the time. Presumably, these
researchers did not ask the mothers-to-be by using the “key test”—place a
key in front an expecting mother and if she grabs it by the fat end,
she’s having a boy, and by the narrow end, a girl. Can you imagine that? could this be superstitious belief?
5. Morning sickness
This is one of those old wives’ tales that is not only literally an old wives’ tale (the women in the Distaff Gospels
were old and wives), but is also believed today—the idea that how and
when you are sick when you’re pregnant can give some clue as to whether
it’s a boy or a girl. According to the Gospels, you’re sicker
in the first three months with a girl than with a boy, but a boy causes
pain after the first trimester. But according to current medical
professionals, if you suffer badly from morning sickness (a horrible
misnomer if there ever was one) or are ill throughout your pregnancy,
you’re more likely to be carrying a girl.
6. Fat daddy?
According to myth, if the father piles on the pounds during the
mother’s pregnancy, then she’s carrying a girl; interestingly, Danish
researchers conducted a study of 100 fathers-to-be and discovered that
indeed, those who had little girls were heavier at their births than
those who had boys.
7. Sweet or sour?
Because girls are naturally sweet, if you’re carrying one, you’ll
crave sweet foods; boys, being made of snips and snails and puppy dogs’
tails, make you crave sour and salty foods. Fact. (Except not really.)
8. One Ring to Bind Them…
When you’re not using your gold ring to enslave Middle Earth, you
could possibly use it to determine the sex of your unborn child. Perhaps
the most popular gender determination myth is that a gold ring
suspended on a string over a pregnant woman’s belly will tell you what
she’s carrying by how it swings: Side to side for a boy, circular for a
girl. It’s not always accurate, of course, but will be right 50 percent
of the time.
9. How you’re carrying
When I was pregnant with my son, we decided not to find out his
gender; that occasioned a lot of people to inform me that they could
tell whether I was harboring a blue or a pink based on how I was
carrying. According to the very ancient lore, if you’re carrying a lower
bump, it’s going to be a boy; if it’s higher, it’s a girl. According to
the people who predicted my baby’s gender, he had a 50 percent chance
of being a boy and 50 percent chance of being a girl, based on their
scientific analysis. Thanks. How you’re carrying is not, scientists say
now, a good indicator of your baby’s gender—it has more to do with your
baby’s muscle tone, your personal shape, and even how old you are when
you get pregnant.
Please see this video for illustrations.
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