Can You Choose the Sex of Your Baby? We Ask a Fertility Specialist
“I wish it were a boy,” a couple would tell me. “My wife would love to have a baby girl,” another one would beg me. These are some of the wishes of many parents-to-be out there. Ever since the beginning of time, mankind has been striving to discover ways to control, or at least predict, the gender of their unborn babies. Despite the advancement of modern science, people of different geographic and cultural backgrounds still believe in various techniques that can master what kind of baby they’d want to conceive. All of these said techniques date back to thousands of years based on theories that are related to either nutrition, positioning and timing of intercourse — or maybe even astrological events as documented in Indian and Chinese history books.
Working as a fertility specialist, you find yourself facing all kinds of inquiries. I have had eager couples asking me what should they eat to get a baby boy, and others trying to find out about the best time to make love to guarantee conceiving a girl.
There’s definitely a big buzz when it comes to baby sex selection. You can either find theories founded by pseudo-scientific explanations, or legends based on mythology. Some claim that eating red meat and salty food might nab you the the ticket to a male — opposed to fish, fruits, vegetables and desserts which should result in getting a female. Position was the main rule for others, and the moon played a massive role for some when they decided to make love. I have bumped into people who believed making love during a full moon was paramount to conceiving a girl.
But, what is fact and what is fiction? Is it really how or when we make love? Can it really be the food we’re consuming? Can certain medicine or kits do the trick? To answer all of these questions, we simply need to look at the evidence, and by that, I mean concrete scientific data. According to modern science, it turns out that there’s no relationship between gender of baby and timing of having sex. Eating a lot of meat does nothing but (maybe) increase your belt size. Being extra mindful of sex positions for the purpose of influencing the baby’s gender will ruin the night for a lot of couples.
Although science refutes all these historical myths and beliefs, there’s actually a way! Apart from it being a bit pricey, it’s the only 100% way that has proven to work. With the help of assisted reproductive technology, couples today are able to choose their baby’s gender via a technique named pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). It is a process that enables the selection of an embryo of a particular gender throughout the process of invitro fertilization (IVF). This concludes by implanting the selected embryo in the woman’s body.
