XX/XY
Most parents say they would be totally happy with a healthy, bouncing baby—girl or boy. But deep-down, many can’t shake their secret hopes for one sex or the other. In fact, according to The Courier Mail, one Australian couple is being denied the right to have another baby through IVF after they terminated twin boys because they wanted a girl. This gender selection craze isn’t a new-age thought for modern couples, though. We take a look back nearly 4,000 years at the most popular gender selection methods throughout history.
Egyptians’ Technique
The Ancient Egyptians thought that women with a greenish cast of complexion were more likely to have boys and were highly valued as wives. How do we know this? They recorded it as hieroglyphic evidence.
Aristotle Method
Back in 330 B.C., couples wanted to produce male babies to carry on the family bloodlines. In order to do this, Aristotle advised men to tie off their left testicle just before intercourse. He believed that the left testicle produced X sperm, and the right testicle produced Y sperm. Aristotle also believed that while having sex, the baby was likely to take on the gender of the more active partner. So, men initiated.
Bed Position
The Ancient Greeks took choosing sides of the bed to a whole new level. They believed that if men had sex while on their right side, they were much more likely to have a boy.
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Ancient Astrological Chart
According to urban legend, a 700-year-old chart claiming to reveal the sex of a baby with over 90 percent accuracy was found buried in a tomb near Beijing, China. The chart based the timing of conception on astrological patterns, and was believed it could predict the sex of the baby well before birth.
Shettles Method
The Shettles Method, developed in the 1960s, plays off the idea that female X sperm are stronger yet slower, and male Y sperm are faster yet weaker. To have a girl, shallow penetration (as with the missionary position) releases sperm in a more acidic area of the vagina where female sperm are able to outswim weaker male sperm. The method advocates that you should have sex two to four days before you ovulate, to ensure more X sperm will have survived when you do. To have a boy, deep penetration releases sperm in an area of the cervix where it is more basic, so the faster male sperm will have a head start over the female sperm.
Ericsson Method
This method, which was developed by Dr. Ronald J. Ericsson in the 1970s, involves putting a sperm sample in a test tube on top of increasingly thicker layers of a protein called albumi. From there, rapid "spinning" of the sperm will cause heavier X-sperm (female producers) to separate from the lighter Y-sperm (male producers) for insemination. Its success rate is somewhere between 69 and 75 percent, and is also the most widely used method for gender selection across the country.
Preimplantation Testing
Super-controversial but highly effective, this technique involves taking an egg from the mother and sperm from the father and combining them in a lab. After a few days, doctors analyze the chromosomes to determine the sex of the baby, and implant the desired embryos into the mother. If the pregnancy is successful, it will produce the desired sex.
LISTBLISS: Check out Our Full List of Gender Prediction Methods
Whelan Method
In 1991, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan published the book Boy or Girl? and claimed that biochemical changes in a woman’s body was what determined the sex of the baby. For a boy, you must have sex four to six days before ovulation. For a girl, you should have sex a couple days before ovulation or even the day of. Instant critics slammed Whelan, saying having sex nearly a week before ovulation wasn’t going to produce a baby at all.
Sperm Sorting
The latest in gender selection involves sperm sorting, a method that has long been used in farming and is currently being tried with humans in the United States. A laser is concentrated on sperm in vitro, separating out the X-chromosome sperm from the Y-chromosome sperm. Although the FDA is still calling it experimental, “MicroSort” may be the sex selection method of the future.
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