naturally choosing the sex?

[bohemianbint]

Do you think you can choose the sex of your baby?

I seem to remember Dr Hillary saying it was all good in theory, but still just a 1 in 2 chance at the end of the day (ie a load of gubbins)?

Well after 4 theoretical girls who are actually boys, for us it was a pile of poo!

Lorax - did you do all the timing and recording so you knew exactly?

My sister was conceived bang on ovulation as my mum was taking her temperature to predict ovulation as it took them years to conceive. According to the theories she should be a boy!

I vaguely remember watching a Sir Robert Winston programme about gender selection. One woman had 3 daughters and desperatley wanted a son "for her husband" to carry on the family name.
Anyway... she ate a certain diet to make her baby plumbing more amenable to male sperm (it had to be more alkali or acidic, can't remember which)
She did have a boy, but SirRW did point out she had a 50/50 chance anyway.

I also read that, bizarrely, breakfast cereal is 80% more likely to make you have a boy. (slightly made up statistic, but you get the idea, it was *significant.)

I eat stacks of it and got boys both times.

i have a boy & a girl, both conceived around the same time within my regular 28 day cycle, around day 13/14. also, if it works, how can yuo have fraternal boy girl twins. unless one egg is released a couple of days later ?

boy sperm swim faster but die quicker than girl ones, if that makes a difference

aaaaaaah, good point, lulumama! I'd say that would stand as fairly conclusive proof that tis bollocks then.

Yeap lulumama heard that too
sex before ovulation more likely to lead to a girl, due to girl sperm living longer

sex after a boy cause they swim faster to egg

Hi i followed a book by dr shettle to have my dd after my 2ds's and well it worked for me!

See, in theory I would like to give it a go next time, but it looks soooo complicated, and takes so long, that I dunno if I could quite be bothered with it?

Depends on what you want. I did a bit of research on this as a friend of mine really wants a boy while I think I want a girl though to be honest, I would be happy with another boy so I am going to leave it up to nature... Enough about me...

It's theoretically easier to conceive a girl. You can take the 'easy' way, which is to have sex everyday up till 3 days before ovulation and then stop and hope for the best so all you need is to know your cycle fairly well and chart. Boy is more difficult cos you need to time it to get it bang on just before ovulation. According to the chart in which I conceived my son, DH and I had sex the night before ovulation and we got a boy!

Or you can douche and diet and all sorts... I remember a similar discussion somewhere else and basically, it's 50-50 you will get a girl or boy and swaying can only sway it maybe 5-10% either way?

bb, with ds1 and ds2 we were trying not to get pg so were avoiding ovulation, so were well before it.
With ds3 I did everything exactly by the book including the godawful diet!
Ditto with ds4.
I think part of the problem with these theories is that the people who "succeed" will go on about it but the people who "fail" stay quiet, after all you don't want people to think you're disappointed with your baby! I would love to have a dd but don't go on about it in RL, just on MN!

an interesting read is "choose the sex of your baby; the natural way" by Hazel Chesterman Phillips. You can get it from amazon.

I had also read the theory about having sex early for a girl and at ovulation for a boy. We had sex 3 days before ovulation (coincidence as we weren't trying to choose the gender) and so was pretty sure we were expecting dd2. Had the same pregnancy symptoms as with dd1 and my mw told me that the heartbeat was a "girls" one. Imagine my surprise at my 36 week scan when we saw ds on the screen. Still didn't believe it til i saw the willy in the flesh

Ali4, is it an interesting read or an "interesting" read.
What did you think of it?

Hi CandleQueen, found it really useful in a very practical way ...understanding my cycle and therefore when i was likely to concieve, tips on what to do and when & how that influences your chances for either DD or DS. Also goes into diet and how that can also affect sex of baby.
I used it to try for DS and it worked for me~ the best £5 i've ever spent.(thinking about I probably could have got it out from the library!) On the flip side a girlfriend had 3 boys but not the DD she desperately wanted.

What I found annoying about Hazel's book was that she had this "get out of jail free" card, where for people like me who followed the advice to the letter and still got the opposite of what we wanted, she blames sperm count!
I think there have been studies on timing and gender selection which have shown that there is little or no benefit in trying this.