Sex Selection

When you first find out you're expecting, a million thoughts run through your mind. Often at the top is what the gender of your baby will be. Although there are many wives tales out there, science also has supplied us with a few fairly accurate ways to tell whether you're expecting a boy or a girl.

Let's start with the most accurate and most invasive way to tell gender, amniocentesis. This procedure is performed in the doctor's office and is used when there is a high risk associated with the pregnancy. Since the amniotic fluid is analyzed for genetic problems, the gender of your baby is also determined. Amniocentesis does carry some risk of miscarriage after the procedure, although it is usually small.

The procedure most expectant parents use as a baby gender predictor is an ultrasound. As this technology has advanced during the past couple of decades, ultrasound results have become more reliable.

During this procedure, sound waves are used to create an image of your baby on the monitor. If possible, the gender of the child may be determined. Whether this determination is accurate or not depends not only on how clearly gender-specific details appear on the ultrasound but also on how talented your ultrasound technician and your physician are at interrupting the images.

If an ultrasound hasn't helped you predict the baby's gender, you can always resort to fun, but not really reliable, old wives' tale methods. Many women like trying these methods just for laughs. In most cases, these approaches have roughly a fifty-fifty chance of being accurate.

One approach is to use the Chinese lunar calendar to predict the gender. This calendar was developed over 700 years ago by a Chinese scientist. You can find many versions of this calendar on websites. The calendar takes into account the mother's age and the month during which conception occurred. From this information, a prediction is made concerning the baby's gender.

Another fun way is to analyze the baby's heart rate. When you visit your obstetrician each month, he or she listens to the baby's heart and counts the rate. Ask the next time you're there what the rate is. The theory is that if the baby's heart rate is over 140 beats per minute, you're having a girl. If, however, the heart rate is under 140 beats per minute, you're having a boy.

Another wives' tale is that you can tell the gender based on how you carry the baby. People will tell you that if you carry the baby mostly just in the front, you're having a boy. If you carry the baby all over, meaning that you don't just have a large bump in the front, then you're having a girl. A variation of this is if you're carrying low, you're having a boy. If you're carrying high, you're having a girl.

So do any of these baby gender predictors work? Well, amniocentesis does, but you wouldn't use this test as solely a way to predict gender. Ultrasounds work fairly well, and depending on how clear the picture of your baby is, may be enough for you to know with a good deal of certainty.

When it comes to the old wives' tale methods, though, don't put too much stock in them. They're wrong as often as they are right and shouldn't be used as a way to sincerely determine the gender of your awaited arrival.