Can a Ring, Some String, and a Needle Predict the Sex of Your Baby?

When my wife and I first learned we were pregnant, we immediately got out our abacus and determined the approximate due date of our little one. But were we having a boy or a girl? That was the question on our minds.

Advice came from everywhere, but the one we tried was a method some farmers used to predict the sex of their livestock. Suspend a ring from the end of a string over the womb of the mother. If the needle rotates clockwise, the child is male; if counter-clockwise, the child is female. We even chose to use my wife's wedding ring.

For the longest time, there was no rotation at all. Perhaps our child would be a hermaphrodite? We waited until we saw a definite spin begin to develop. Slowly at first, but then we could clearly see it was beginning to move . . . clockwise. There it was, scientific evidence that my first child would be a masculine child.

A boy! How proud I was that this concrete test of modern science had given me the result I was hoping for, a son. I already had a name prepared for the event, and I promptly shared it with my wife. Having thoughts of blue rooms and footballs, we went to the doctor for our 20 week ultrasound. I was looking hard at the screen to see "boy parts" confirming what our ring had predicted. We told the doctor our theory. He chuckled and said, "hold on to your ticket just a sec" before showing us the winning image.

"Looks like you're having a little girl."

Two pregnancies and two beautiful little girls later, we had a boy. No wedding rings were involved in the selection process.