Boy or Girl? Tipping the Baby Balance

Designer babies may no longer be an option for only the rich and famous. The following methods of gender selection are all about tipping the scales in favor of conceiving the baby of your chosen sex without using advanced medical technology, which is hugely expensive and, at this stage, largely controversial.

Parents-to-be, please note these methods are theories and are by no means fool-proof. We can't guarantee you'll have a child of certain gender just by following the methods, but it might be interesting for you to test the theories and see who you conceive!

The Shettles Method

This method of gender selection has been around since the 1960s. Dr. Landrum Shettles, MD, author of How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby, recommends methods of gender selection most upheld by scientific evidence and without costly or controversial medical procedures.

The basic premise is that men produce two types of sperm, the X (female) and Y (male). According to Dr. Shettles' studies, the male (Y) sperm are smaller and weaker but faster than the female (X) sperm, which are bigger, stronger, and slower. Understanding this information helps in manipulating the sex of your child.

The Right Time

The most important factor in gender selection is the timing of intercourse during the monthly cycle, so the woman must be familiar with her menstrual cycle. She can learn more about this by following natural family planning methods (including charting her basal body temperature and tracking her cervical fluid), and using ovulation predictor kits, available at most pharmacies.

The Shettles method believes that the closer to ovulation you have sex the more likely it is that you will have a boy. However, if you have sex two or three days prior to the egg being released, you have a better chance of having a girl. Basically, if you have intercourse right at or near ovulation then the Y sperm will make it to the egg quickly and you will have a boy, whereas if the sperm is released two or three days before the egg, the Y sperm will die off and there will be more X sperm left waiting for the egg to appear and fertilization will most likely result in a girl.