To think it’s impossible to sway the likelihood of having either boy or girl

[LJP7]

I can’t see how valid the Shettles method and the likes are. Surely there would be 75% boys if it were true that boy sperm swim faster. AIBU to think it’s literally 50/50 chance, whoever you are?

It’s true that female sperms are slower and live longer, and therefore having sex a few days before ovulation is more likely to result in a girl. However, it only sways the odds by something like 10%, and the same in reverse, so overall it evens itself out.

If you had sex 3 days before ovulation, 1 day before and the day of then surely there would be a mix of them all so it doesn’t matter so much

That said I’ve noticed an interesting gender pattern whereby if somebody has a boy followed by a girl, baby number three is almost always a girl. And if they have a girl followed by a boy, baby number 3 is almost always a boy. Purely anecdotal but I would be interested to see any studies about this! I don’t think there are any though.

Well yes but that isn’t Shettles is it? Shettles is having sex a few days before and then abstaining, so only the long life sperm is left to fertilise the egg. And these sperm are more likely to be female, although only slightly, so it’s very far from reliable.

I have a girl and boy, both conceived by DTD every day for a few days leading up to and including ovulation day.

I did a sway, it was 17yrs ago nearly and I followed some crazy ideas. Who knows whether it made a difference but it was all to do with being the right environment for a certain sperm to succeed. It started out a bit of fun but got a bit obsessive after a while. I did get the gender of choice but who knows whether I would have anyway or not. I did genuinely have a 3rd baby as I wanted a 3rd child so not just for a particular gender and the baby would have been loved and adored no matter what the gender was.

When we were trying for a baby we had sex ahead of ovulation so we didn't miss it as i really struggled with the ovulation tests and couldn't quite figure out when ovulation was. We have a girl.

@LJP7 this explains it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/CbQ18g6MH5cts0PJvdKhGQ/why-are-more-boys-born-in-certain-years

There does seem to be boy/girl years! When we had DD everyone was having girls (8 out of the 10 couples we knew that year). When we had DS the same couples all went on to have boys!

Apparently they looked into why more boys born in wartime/just after and found it was due to couples having more sex in that cycle due to periods away from each other

How interesting, that would make perfect sense. More sex, means sex closer to ovulation, equals more boys.

Interesting, my eldest born Jan 2016 is one of only 6 boys in his class of 28!

Every sports class out of school like swimming we’ve joined he’s been the only boy too. Would love to know what stats are going on there.