Selecting Your Baby's Gender

Being able to choose the gender of your child can be a real blessing. Not only will you know what color to paint the nursery before your child is born, but you'll also be able to avoid certain diseases that only strike particular genders.

Avoid Certain Genetic Predispositions

Choosing the gender of your child might seem frivolous to most people, but if certain medical conditions run in your family, it might be worth it to you as a parent.

Hemophilia is connected to the X chromosome, therefore males are more likely to inherit the disease. Females have two X chromosomes, so if one carries the defective hemophilia gene they can make it up with the other. That means that men are much more likely to have the condition. On the other hand, if all the women in both parent's families tend to have breast cancer; you might choose to have a boy.

These are just a few of the pre-existing genetic conditions you might avoid for your child by choosing the gender. Genetics testing of both parents could give you a more complete picture.

You Just Want a Girl/Boy

Maybe you've had five girls or five boys. Maybe you grew up in a family of all boys and feel you'll understand a boy better. Maybe growing up in a family of all boys has made you long for a little girl. Whatever the reason, you want a specific gender.

If your reason isn't purely genetics, do remember that people are going to be a little judgmental. They'll say things as such as "I'd be happy just to have a healthy child." Some people, who might be having trouble even getting pregnant, will be particularly annoyed. Right now it's still seen almost as a "designer baby," if you use a lab to determine a baby's gender. It's not the only method, but it is a little more foolproof than most of the others.

People won't judge you as much if you just say "we're trying for a boy/girl" and then use non-lab or informal methods. It's nobody's business how you're trying of course (lab or otherwise), but they will ask, mostly because they want to know in order to give you their own advice or to pick up knowledge on gender selection.

Choosing the Gender at the Lab

Unfortunately, heading to the lab and asking for a particular gender is very expensive for most people. If you aren't already going in for fertility issues, you might not find it practical to have the lab to help determine the sex of your baby.

Another downside to lab-based gender selection is that even after all that money is spent, it still might not get the gender you've planned for.

Different methods have differing success rates. Read your paperwork carefully and ask about guarantees. (I don't know of any clinic that would absolutely guarantee any method). Make sure you get it in writing from the clinic.

MicroSort and other sperm filtration methods separate male and female sperm. You choose the gender and get artificially inseminated by the sperm gender of your choice. Now, even this method is not 100%, because they haven't been able to get the sperm separated for a totally pure sample, ie. all x or y chromosome sperm.

Other, more expensive methods include Preimplantation-Genetic-Diagnosis, which actually screens for genetically based disorders. If you want to prevent your child from carrying a family disease, this is the way to go. It's more costly of course, but it's by far the most accurate. (Near 100%, but even this method lets a few slip by!)

Is the mother or the father responsible for gender?

The answer is both. Sperm determines the gender, so you might think it's the male who's totally responsible, but science has shown that depending on what stage the egg is in, the egg can reject sperm of a particular gender. However, if the egg is in the female sperm acceptance stage and it's bombarded with only male sperm, eventually the egg's defenses are battered down and a male sperm might get through. Therefore, if a man works as an x-ray tech or a fighter pilot and they have mostly X-chromosome sperm, you're still more likely to get a girl.

Soft Methods

First, you might want to figure out what you'll be more likely to have and go from there. Lots of different factors determine gender, but certain things, such as ethnicity, age and family history can throw the percentage one way or another. This article talks about http://www.sixwise.com those factors and the global trend of slightly more girls than boys being born.

No preconception method is foolproof. You'll find lots of web sites out there guaranteeing that you get the gender you want, but the truth is that these so called "natural methods" aren't proven. Be wary of websites that claim a 98%- 100% success rate.

Diet, time of the month you have sex or sexual position are not scientifically proven to guarantee the outcome of gender. Most of these books and methods contradict each other. It's quite perplexing. Of course it doesn't hurt to try the missionary position all the time if you want a girl, but things could get awfully boring awfully fast.

Sometimes the old wives are right. But mostly they aren't. At this site: http://www.vernoncoleman.com/htctsoynb.htm , I found out that Frenchmen actually cut off their left testicle because they believed all the female producing sperm came from the left one.

Destroying the Bell Curve

It's just slightly statistically easier to have girls than boys. Our species is more likely to have survivability with a higher population of girls, because it gives us a more varied gene pool. Women can have about one child a year, but it's possible for one man can impregnate 100 women. If there are 20 females and one male in a population there would be more genetic variation and it's possible to have 20 children in one year. Reversed and only one child would be produced per year from the single woman, sharply reducing the number and genetic variation. A balance of males and females is best, with perhaps slightly more females born than males.

If gender choice becomes the norm, if it's cheap enough, couples might choose gender simply based on preference rather than on a real genetic need. In China, they're facing a population imbalance crisis:

"One effect of China's strict population control has been a jump in gender selection of babies. Traditional preferences for a son mean that more and more women abort their baby if an early-term ultrasound examination shows it is a girl. Officials deny that the gender imbalance is a result of the family planning policy. It is illegal for doctors to tell parents the results of an ultrasound test without a medical reason, though many do so. As a result, abortions of female foetuses are widespread, especially in rural areas, as parents try to ensure that the one child they are allowed is a boy." - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1292295.ece

Kits that Predict Gender

Several companies sell kits that supposedly predict the gender of your child 5-10 weeks in. (Ultrasound can determine the sex at 14 weeks). These kits cost a few hundred dollars and you have to send in a blood sample. The accuracy rating has been called into question and there is a worry that such a kit might not be used merely to predict, but also to determine. Here's a wiki article about just one of these companies, Acu-Gen, which sells one of the least proven kits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Gender_Mentor

They do not sell these kits in countries that have a particular gender bias, for fear that parents in the early stages for pregnancy would use the kit to determine whether or not to have an abortion. It's unlikely that most parents in the U.S. use it in this manner, except for those who know their child will face a debilitating disease determined by gender. (Note that I am not advocating this, I am just pointing out that it happens, mostly because lab methods are so expensive). Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1550629/Pros-and-cons-in-%22baby-sex-test%22-debate.html

You Can Never be Sure

One of the things that's frustrating about trying to choose your baby's gender is that no method is absolutely foolproof. The best you can hope for is a bump in percentage, making you more or less likely to have a boy or a girl. All you can do is attempt influence outcome.