Family Planning

I've read about this Prince or Princess gender selection guide book that talks about the strategies and methods of actually allowing you to select a baby girl or boy in the next pregnancy.  Kinda blew my head off.  Coming from a midwife and not a doctor or geneticist can be a little, well, dubious and unscrupulous.  But could she have actually found a scientific breakthrough?  Is it actually possible or has it worked for you or anyone you know?

I found its website:  Prince or Princess, Steps towards choosing your baby's gender before conception.  Authored by Alicia Pennington.  Published in January 2010 and its just getting settled in the market.  She's got experience, research, and testimonials.  Pretty amazing stuff for C$50.  Coming across books like this and websites that report medical advances, so to speak, in the area of fertility and genetics, gender selection has made some real noise.  But is this the real deal or a scam?

A friend of mine living in the US and is a RN told me that she will use a medical kit to predetermine the baby she wanted to conceive last year.  A concoction of diet, body temp, sex positions, etc.  She wanted a girl.  Then when the baby was born she made an announcement that its a boy.  So..... it didn't work for her, at least - maybe.

Early this year, I came across an article that reports predetermination of genetic features for your baby.  The term Designer Babies (view link to Time magazine report) erupted in 1999 and has continuously been discussed in several reports in the present decade like this one The Great Designer Baby Controversy of '09 or this one Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations in 2006.  Gender and genetic features selection is a wondrous possibility in lieu of human evolution.  There's definitely a wow factor in it. 

This professional midwife who authored the book above may just be telling the truth.  But I'm still running hot and cold, concerned for regular folks like us to be deceived and sucked in to something bogus. Would you support the scientific advancement of selection and designing the next generation of babies? 

There is also this Chinese old-wives-tale to choose the gender of your baby. I don't know if it works or not. Take it with a grain of salt! :-)

To get a boy:
- Have the husband eat mostly meat (less veggies), and the wife eats mostly veggies and a little meat.

To get a girl:
- Have the husband eat mostly veggies (a lot less meat), and the wife eats mostly meat (less veggies).

I think they say it's something to do with the pH balance (acidity/alkalinity) in the sperm and in the  vagina (something like that).

Let me know if you have heard of this, or have tried this! :-)

Darmeen Cheung wrote:There is also this Chinese old-wives-tale to choose the gender of your baby. I don't know if it works or not. Take it with a grain of salt! :-)

To get a boy:
- Have the husband eat mostly meat (less veggies), and the wife eats mostly veggies and a little meat.

To get a girl:
- Have the husband eat mostly veggies (a lot less meat), and the wife eats mostly meat (less veggies).

I think they say it's something to do with the pH balance (acidity/alkalinity) in the sperm and in the  vagina (something like that).

Let me know if you have heard of this, or have tried this! :-)

There may be some sense in that.  Its like beefing up the right knight when they all compete for the maiden's hand.  But isn't gender determined by the sperm that actually penetrates the egg cell during fertilization, i.e. if that tiny little bugger happens to have more X or Y chromosome.  We need a fertility doctor to enlighten us on this premise,or maybe if we can get the contact number of that Chinese fertility expert.  :-D