Old wives' tales are just that — tales — but they prove attempts at sex determination have been around for generations. German hausfraus once allowed their husbands to bring an axe into the bed to guarantee a boy. Czarina Alexandra of Russia reportedly ate a high-protein diet prescribed by scientists at the Embryological Institute of Vienna in the early twentieth century in an attempt to give birth to a male heir. After giving birth to four girls, she finally got lucky — her fifth child was a boy.
Michelle, a New York mom who asked for her last name to be withheld to protect her son, feels having preference is natural. "I wanted a girl more than life itself," she recalled. "Not that I wouldn't have been happy with a boy," she quickly added. When she had her daughter, she ascribed the position she and her husband used — missionary style — to her success. Their son is the couple's second child, and Michelle has an explanation for that too: they did it doggy style, and they got a boy.
Reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Potter pooh-poohs such strategies. He has even less patience for the companies who promise a girl or boy via methods he calls "lacking in efficacy."
The director of reproductive medicine and surgery at Anaheim Memorial Medical Center and director of the Huntington Reproduction Center in Laguna Hills, California, Potter says none of those methods have more than a 50/50 chance of producing the desired result, the same chance we all have of producing a girl or boy the old-fashioned way.
Potter has just completed work on Family Balancing: How to Choose the Gender of Your Next Child, expected to hit bookshelves in October. The book lists Micro-Sort and PGD as parents' best options.
Potter has a lot of compassion for parents who want to choose their baby's sex.
"Most of the women who come to me, this is their third or fourth pregnancy, and for them, this is it."
His mother cried at the birth of her third child — another boy.
"For a high percentage of women, when they're growing up, they have a lot of thoughts about parenting and what they're going to be like. The baby they see in that image, often of a little girl, this baby, this image in their mind, lives in their subconscious just like a human child," he said. "When you have to let go of that image, that dream, it is a mourning process."
Today, Potter helps women like his mom.
"Most of the women who come to me, this is their third or fourth pregnancy, and for them, this is it," he said. "I explain to them that there's a 50/50 change they'll get the gender they want for free. But they want to have one more pregnancy, and that's it."
©2008 Jeanne Sager and Babble
About the Author
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Jeanne Sager is a freelance writer and photographer living in upstate New York with her husband and daughter, Jillian. She maintains a blog of her award-winning columns at jeannesager.blogspot.com. |
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