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Posts with tag old wives tales

It's a boy... or a girl

Posted: Apr 17th 2008 11:00AM by Maggie Vink
Filed under: Women's Health

My mom always has tricks for determining if someone is having a boy or a girl. When my sister was pregnant, her overly swollen feet meant she was having a boy ... she ended up having a girl. When my cousin was carrying her baby quite high, my mom was convinced it was a girl ... wrong again -- she had a bouncing baby boy. And when my other sister had terrible sweet cravings during pregnancy, my mom also predicted a girl ... and finally my mom was right.

Old wives tales abound when it comes to determining the sex of your baby. But now scientists have come across a way of determining whether it's a boy or a girl that sounds suspiciously like an old wives tale.

Researchers studied over 220,000 pregnant women and determined that if you're heavier at the start of your second pregnancy than you were at your first, there's a higher chance that you'll have a boy. They aren't clear why, however. One researcher suggests that environmental contaminants that are linked to male births may also build up fatty tissue.

It all sounds a bit flimsy to me. And it's certainly not a reason to pack on pounds if you want a boy or go on a crazy diet if you want a girl. Call me old-fashioned, but if I were pregnant, I think I'd trust an ultrasound more.

Study: Baby's heart rate doesn't predict gender

Posted: Jan 26th 2008 12:00PM by Bethany Sanders
Filed under: Women's Health, Healthy Kids

During both of my pregnancies, my babies' heart rates hovered around 140 at every checkup, the number that folklore says can predict whether the baby is a boy or a girl. A faster heart rate means you're having a girl, they say. A slower heart rate, a boy. So after a while, it meant little to me whether the tale was true or not. My babes stayed stubbornly right on the line, every checkup.

A study published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology that involved 79 pregnant women could not find a link between fetal heart rate and gender. Instead, they say that fetal heart rates all seem to follow the same trend. They start out at about 85 beats a minute, raise quickly to 175 beats early in the first trimester, then slow back down to an average of 120 to 160 beats a day.

What do you think? Does the method work? Or does science trump tradition?



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