Many parents-to-be claims they don’t have a preference over their baby’s sex, as long as they’re healthy. This can be true, but if you’re here, I bet that you dream about having a beautiful little girl. Don’t worry, it will be between us. I really understand your feeling.
Even though it’s not an exact science, it’s possible for parents to try a thing or two in order to increase the chances of conceiving a girl. If you look up online, you’ll see many couples that tried actually succeeded and are now happy parents of a baby girl.
In this article, we’re going to tell you a little about biology and how a baby’s sex is defined during conception, but also about the most known methods to influence the baby’s sex and, finally, give you a few tips on how to do it.
Table of Contents
How the Baby Sex is Determined
Ladies and Gentleman, The Gametes!
The first thing we’re going to talk about is how your bodies work and how the sex of your baby is defined, so not only can you understand our tips and advice, but also look for more ways to make it happen.
You can always skip this part, but if you don’t know much about biology and embryology, we advise you to take a look at it. After all, knowledge is power.
In can you don’t know already, the human embryo is formed by the union of two unicellular gametes, the female gamete, mostly known as egg, and the male gamete, known as sperm.
Both egg and sperm have 23 chromosomes, and when combined, the fertilized egg will have in normal cases the total number of 46 chromosomes, the human number. However, only one of those 23 chromosomes will contribute to the sex of the new baby.
Women’s eggs only have the X chromosome, while male sperm can have X or Y chromosomes. In other words, the mother can only give her baby the chromosome X, while the father and give both male (Y) and female (X) chromosome.
Baby girls will be formed by the combination of two Xchromosomes, which means they’ll be XX for the sex chromosome. Boys, on the other hand, will have one of each, being XY. This may seem a little confusing, but it’s actually simpler than it looks.
The sperms that have the potential to be girls, as you can imagine, are not identical to the ones that will be boys. The differences, however, aren’t something as significant as many people believe, like the speed of the swim, size, and swim pattern, as revealed in a recent study.
When the Magic Happens
The definition of the baby’s sex and which sperm will first enter the egg is still a mystery, but what we know so far is that this definition happens at the very beginning of things, the fecundation.
When the man ejaculates, thousands of millions of sperms will swim towards the egg, and the one that reaches and first enters it will decide the baby’s sex. In other words, if an X chromosome sperm enters first, you’ll have a girl; if a Y chromosome does, you’ll have a boy.
This definition is mostly decisive, except when something goes wrong, and the chromosome is duplicated or something like that. But don’t worry, those cases are rare, and it’s something very unlikely to happen.
And now you’re probably asking, “Is there a way I can know which sperm will enter the egg?” or “How can I increase the odds of conceiving a girl?”
Who Fertilizes the Egg?
For many years, scientists believed the differences between male and female sperm made it possible for us to manipulate the odds and increase the chance to conceive a baby of the wanted sex.
You probably already heard of the Shettles method, and well, this is what it is about, manipulating the odds based on the differences between male and female sperm.
Sadly for the lovers of the Shettles method, Dr. Linda Penfold published a paper in 1998 where she proves that there’s no significant difference between sperms in aspects that were the base of the method.
But was this the end for Dr. Shettles?
Her Body, Her Choice?
Another exciting thing discovered by Dr. Carmen Almiñana and her team of scientists in the research they released in 2014 is that the woman probably has some influence on the winning sperm.
They found that the women’s oviducts can have a preference for male or female sperm, changing its environment to favor the sperm they like best, which would influence the odds of conceiving a girl or a boy.
This information is very new, and scientists still need to dig deeper for it to be proved and consider definitive but don’t you think it’s amazing how the female body is powerful and capable of deciding what’s best for itself?
What we can be sure about the selection process is that it’s still a mystery that intrigues many members of the scientific society. However, many studies are being held in order to tell how this sex definition mechanism works.
Hopefully, in a couple more years, we’ll know for sure and then find a way to naturally influence for sure the sex of our baby by the time of conception.
Can Your Baby Be What You Eat?
Everything we eat and consume had an influence on our body and well being, and interesting as it can be, it may also interfere with the baby’s sex.
This curious study published in 2008 named “You Are What Your Mother Eat” tells us that the number of determined substances such as vitamins, fats, and some nutrients and their influence over the body’s PH of the body may have some influence over the baby’s sex.
In other words, if you wish to conceive a little girl, you should adjust your diet in order to keep a more acid PH in your body in order to favor the X sperm during conception.
It’s important to remember that those eating changes have to start at least one month before the conception, so the body has enough time to process and prepare properly.
High Levels of Calcium and Magnesium: Keeping the levels of both calcium and magnesium high is very important in the process of conceiving a girl, for that remember to consume food such as corn, beans, peas and peanuts, plums, walnuts, coffee, eggs, liver, and yogurt, etc.
Acid-producing foods: Keeping the vaginal and cervical fluid acidic is very important, so prefer to consume foods that will help this happen, such asfish and meat like salmon, tuna, carp, haddock, mackerel, beef, lamb, turkey, poultry; cheese, and butter; olives; white flour, rice, and bread; cocoa, vinegar, mustard, etc.
Vitamin-C: You don’t need supplements for this. Just eat or drink a glass of natural lemon, lime, or tangerine juice a day is enough.
Avoid alkaline foods: Alkaline environment favors the male sperm, and since you’re trying for a girl, we should avoid foods such as banana, avocado, breakfast cereal, almonds, apples, and mushrooms.
Keep your glucose levels low: The same study related the fact that most women with high glucose levels had a boy, so it’s interesting that you keep yours in check. Avoid eating breakfast cereal first thing in the morning and eating many times a day, but this doesn’t mean you have to skip meals!
The Most Known Method
The Shettles method is probably the one you’ve heard about even without knowing about it, it’s no doubt the most famous and known method of influencing the baby’s sex, and it’s been spread all over the world since 1970.
Dr. Shettle’s book, Your Baby’s Sex: Now You Can Choose, released in the ’70s, talked about how you could influence your baby’s sex. The most important things would be the moment of conception, considering the ovulation day if you should have intercourse a few days before ovulation or days after, morphological differences between the sperms, their favorite PH, and so on.
This method also gives us ways of Influencing the PH of the vaginal mucus in order to give the desired sperm the best odds as well as positions for intercourse and other relevant information.
According to Dr. Shettles, to increase the odds of getting pregnant with a little girl, the couple should:
- Having sex between the end of menstruation and at least three days before ovulation
- Avoid intercourse from three days prior to the day of ovulation
- Use an acidic douche made with two tablespoons of white vinegar to one quart of water before each conception, attempting to turn the environment more acidic.
- Opt for positions that favor a shallow penetration during intercourse, such as the missionary position as the likes.
- If the couple wants a baby girl, the woman should delay her orgasm to the end of intercourse, which means, after the ejaculation, once the female orgasm turns the environment more alkaline.
Nothing is Perfect
We’ve mentioned before that some points of the Shettles Method are contested in other studies. Some of the most famous such as the difference in speed and shape of male and female sperms, were contested both in 1998 and 2006.
The most important factor, according to Dr. Shettles, is the time of conception, this moment is determined by the moment of ovulation, and the veracity of this has been both reassured and contested over the years.
A study ( 1979) published in The New England Journal of Medicine established that having sex more than three days before ovulation would increase the odds of conceiving a girl, as suggested by the Shettles Method.
Nevertheless, another study (1991) made with a smaller group and published in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology showed opposite results, which means that more couples conceived a girl when having intercourse during ovulation.
To close this section showing that nothing was certain in 1995, yet another study published in The New England Journal of Medicine affirmed that there was no relation at all between the time of conception and the sex of the baby.
What is the correct answer? We don’t know, but science’s still trying to give us a decisive result!
Is it Worth The Try?
Even though not perfect, Dr. Settles’ method’s the most popular and ethical one available that has some sort of scientific basement.
Many members of the scientific and religious community support it openly once it’s completely natural and doesn’t involve any kind of medical procedure or artificial selection.
In 2006 the sixth edition of Dr. Shettle’s book, Your Baby’s Sex: Now You Can Choose, was published. This version of the book had information from actualized studies that showed 75% percent of success for couples who tried to conceive a girl and an even higher (80% ) for couples who wanted a boy.
What we mean is that we can’t be sure that this method works, but many couples are using it, and most of them are actually being successful in conceiving a girl with Dr. Shettle’s help.
The Only Way
If you have a special reason to only have a girl, like a hereditary condition or even a lot of boys in your family, there are ways to artificially select your baby’s sex and make sure that you’ll conceive a girl.
Unfortunately, such methods can only be performed with professional help, and because of that, they can only be accessed at fertility clinics, which also makes them very expensive.
It’s also important to remember that every medical procedure has risks, in this case, to the woman, and this should be carefully measured if your only desire is to choose your baby’s sex.
Those methods are:
- In Vitro Fertilization (IVF): With the help of doctors, the women’s cycle and ovulation will be monitored and stimulated so they can collect a couple of eggs and fertilize them outside the body with the father’s sperm. After a few days, the zygote is implanted in the woman’s womb.
- Gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT): This method is less invasive than IVF. In this case, both the egg and sperm are washed and implanted directly on the women’s fallopian tubes, and the fertilization occurs almost naturally inside the body, and then the zygote naturally moves and implants itself in the uterus.
- Zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT): This method is a fusion of the ones above. Doctors will collect both egg and sperm and fertilize them outside the body, like in IVF. The zygote will then be placed at the woman’s tubes and natural flow to the uterus for implantation.
To select the baby’s sex and make sure this pregnancy will conceive a girl, a process called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) or preimplantation genetic selection (PGS) is made.
This method consists of testing the embryos for their before implantation. Mostly the embryo will only be tested for genetic disorders or hereditary conditions but can also be tested for sex so the couple will know for sure if they’ll get pregnant with a girl or a boy.
Am I Allowed to Choose?
If you, for some reason, are getting pregnant with medical aid, you may actually be able to choose the sex of your baby. That will depend on the country you’re going to have the procedure.
There’s no law in the United States that forbids a couple from choosing to conceive a girl a boy when having an IVF or ZIFT. However, this doesn’t apply to all places. Brazil, Canada, UK, and China, for example, don’t allow the couple to pick the baby’s sex.
You can always go abroad to have your procedure, but this will most certainly result in many other expenses and can end up being a little too much for tour pocket if you’re only doing it to having a girl or a boy.
The reasons many governments give to forbid this selection, despite the ethical ones, are that they fear with gender selection the population will increase in one sex or other, which could result in disproportional population growth and future problems.
However, if you have some sort of genetic condition linked to sex, this may be one of the only cases when selecting the sex of your baby is allowed.
It’s Also Important to Reflect
If you read everything to this point, it’s safe to say you are really interested in conceiving a girl and trust me; we get it! Girls are adorable, amazing, powerful, and full of the most incredible potentials.
However, it’s also our job to suggest you think a little more about the reasons you want it and how far you’re willing to go to have your baby girl, and how much is it worth it.
We should never place high expectations on something we can’t control. We can always pay attention to ovulation date, sperm count, PH, food, but in the end, the only thing we can mess with is the odds of conceiving a girl or a boy.
What we mean by that is, don’t lose focus on the important thing here, the beautiful baby that will soon be here to fulfill your life with joy and love!
SOURCES:
- Almiñana, C., Caballero (2014) The battle of the sexes starts in the oviduct: modulation of oviductal transcriptome by X and Y-bearing spermatozoa. https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2164-15-293
- Blight, Alysse (2019) “The Shettles Method of Sex Selection”. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/shettles-method-sex-selection
- Grant, Valerie J. (2006) “Entrenched Misinformation about X and Y Sperm.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1440662/pdf/bmj3320916b.pdf
- Gray, Ronald H. (1991) “Natural Family Planning and Sex Selection: Fact or Fiction?” https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(11)90558-4/pdf
- Harlap, Susan (1979) “Gender of Infants Conceived on Different Days of the Menstrual Cycle.” https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197906283002601https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197906283002601
- Hossain, A.M., Barik, S. & Kulkarni, P.M. (2001) Lack of significant morphological differences between human X and Y spermatozoa and their precursor cells (spermatids) exposed to different prehybridization treatments. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12140136_Lack_of_Significant_Morphological_Differences_Between_Human_X_and_Y_Spermatozoa_and_Their_Precursor_Cells_Spermatids_Exposed_to_Different_Prehybridization_Treatments
- Martin, R., D. (2018) Sperm Selection: Fertilization Not Random After All? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-weme-do-it/201809/sperm-selection-fertilization-not-random-after-all
- Mathews, F.; Johnsons, Paul J.; Neil, A. (2008) “You Are What Your Mother Eats” https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2008.0105
- Wilcox, Allen J. “Timing of Intercourse in Relation to Ovulation – Effects on the Probability of Conception, Survival of the Pregnancy, and Sex of the Baby.” http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199512073332301
