Gender Selection

My husband and I dated for 5 years before getting married. We were married for 2 years before we decided to try for a family. In this time we had many conversations about the future and our day dreams about our future children. I never saw myself having boys, and feared not knowing how to raise one. My husband felt the same about girls, as I feel is typical for most men. As time grew closer to when starting a family was a soon to be reality my husband talked about his fantasy of having 2 kids- and no matter the gender of the second child, the first would be a boy, so that the younger sibling would always have a 'big brother' to look over them. I was immediately in love with this idea, and hoped this would be a reality for us.

I had heard about sex selection or gender selection before, mostly as it pertained to IVF couples, but was not aware that there were people that practiced a method of having intercourse just certain times of the month in hopes of conceiving one gender over another. Through my research I discovered that this method is known as the Shettles Method. The Shettles Method was developed by Landrum B. Shettles and published in his book How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby.

The thought behind this method is that the Y-chromosome carrying sperm (boy) is faster and smaller than that of the X-chromosome carrying sperm (girl). The X-chromosome carrying sperm is also believed to be able to survive in acidic environments for longer than that of the Y-chromosome carrying sperm. In short, depending on the desired gender one can influence conception of a certain gender in their favor by timing intercourse with ovulation.

I spent some time reading personal accounts of people explaining whether the method had worked for them, and what other 'strategies' they used in attempting to conceive the desired gender for their child. The effectiveness of the method is widely debated both among the medical community and those trying to conceive (Shettles claims that is method for a boy holds a success rate of 80-85% and the method for a girl is a little less at 75-80% effectiveness.). In order to try and 'boost' their chances women have coupled the Shettles method with numerous other methods, beliefs and strategies. Many of the women I read about are having sex using certain positions, deciding beforehand whether to achieve orgasm during sex, having their husbands wear boxers vs. tight underwear and avoiding hot showers, and/or completely changing both their husbands diets as well as their own.

I felt a tad uncomfortable with the amount of women seeking one gender over another. I, myself, was simply curious about the possibilities, but knew that I would be blessed to conceive a child no matter the gender. There was no way I wanted to take the fun out of intimacy with my husband, not to mention there was no way I could convince him to change his underwear style, to avoid taking hot showers and especially would not have been able to coax him into changing his diet in hopes of becoming pregnant with one gender over another.

In 2010 I came off of birth control. My husband had enlisted in the military, and was scheduled to be gone for nearly two years. In that time I became aware of my body, tracked my cycles and learned the signs of ovulation. Had my husband been home we could have easily used the Natural Family Planning method of birth control. (The Natural Family Planning method of birth control is where a woman tracks her cycles and knows what specific days each month to avoid sex or use some sort of barrier method of birth control to prevent pregnancy.) When my husband came home, we did not chance it and continued to use birth control until we decided it was time to start trying for a family.

As luck would have it, and I believe mostly due to me spending so much time getting to know my body and my cycles, we conceived the first month we tried. I can still tell you I ovulated on January 28th, 2012, from my right ovary. (Strange, right?)

Every woman, when they find out they are pregnant, starts wondering the gender of their child before the urine on their pregnancy test is dry. The wonder and desire to know starts to eat at a woman, causing her to test out even the strangest of old wives tales. I admit that when I was pregnant I took all the online 'Gender Predictor tests', checked the Chinese gender chart with both my lunar age and birth age, and I even went so far as to pee in a cup full of baking soda (if it fizzes, it's supposed to mean you're pregnant with a boy). What really stuck with me though was one study that could determine with up to 97.5% accuracy the gender of a fetus in utero.

This study found that 97.5% of fetuses that implanted on the right side of the uterus were boys, likewise those that implanted on the left were girls. (The thing to remember for pregnant women looking to test the accuracy of this study, if your sonogram is done vaginally the picture is 'flipped'.) What the study didn't talk about is whether or not this could be influenced by which ovary the woman ovulates from during the month of conception. For example, I knew I ovulated from my right ovary the month I conceived my son and my first ultrasound showed that he implanted on the right side of my uterus. Are the two interconnected? I am just a stay at home mom with a computer, I am in no way a scientist or an expert in conception, but my theory is that the fertilized egg is more likely to implant on the side that it is ovulated from. According to Google I am not the only person to wonder this, but there are no studies to be found.

In relation to my own pregnancy: I ovulated from my right side, my baby implanted on the right side, and is in fact 100% boy. I knew I had gotten pregnant January 28th, and I assumed that because of the timing of our intercourse, as well as which side I ovulated on that I was pregnant with a boy. So wouldn't a woman essentially be able to use this as another form of gender selection? Maybe I'll give it a whirl in a year or so when my husband and I try for our second child. We've tossed around the fantasy of having a little girl to complete our family, so fingers crossed I ovulate from my left ovary when the time comes. Either way, we will be blessed to have another wonderful child of our own when the time is right.