So, what are little boys made of? Higher calories, more bananas and a higher sodium intake?
As soon as you tell someone that you’re trying to conceive, you need to prepare for an abundance of advice on how to influence the sex of your baby. There are many old wives’ tales on how to conceive a boy or a girl. Could choosing your baby’s sex be as simple as changing the way you eat?
A 2008 survey on 740 pregnant women, published in Proceedings of Royal Society B titled “You are what your mother eats” found that women who ate lots of breakfast cereal, salt, and potassium were more likely to give birth to baby boys. The aim of the study was to understand what happens to embryos in utero. Not all fertilized eggs make it to birth, so perhaps the mother’s diet could promote the survival of one gender over another? Despite the slightly higher incidence of baby boys among women who had more potassium and sodium, sceptics heard the buzz and weighed in.
After all, hadn’t scientists answered the question about how a baby’s sex is determined a long time ago? According to statistician Stanley Young, who works for the National Institute of Statistical Science in Research Triangle Park, N.C., “The female has nothing to do with the gender of the baby.” The high-school biology explanation is fairly straight forward. The male determines the sex of the offspring: If the man contributes a sperm bearing an X chromosome, the embryo becomes a female. A Y chromosome produces a male baby. End of story.
Yet, there are certainly plenty of “words of wisdom” about pregnancy that seem to get passed on from generation to generation. If you’re experiencing pregnancy cravings old wives’ tales suggests that having salty vs. sweet cravings can predict gender. Food cravings when pregnant with a girl apparently consist of sweet things like chocolate, pastries, juice and fruit. While food cravings when pregnant with a boy tend to be saltier, savory items such as meat, cheese, and other forms of protein.
The reality however is that food cravings may be linked to hormonal surges or to changes in the way the body absorbs nutrients during pregnancy, So, there’s really no rhyme or reason behind specific food cravings, which tend to be very individual.
Long story short: Gender selection without in vitro fertilization (IVF) has little science behind it. The only way to select the sex of your baby is by undergoing IVF with preimplantation genetic testing. It is much more common now than it was a few years ago when Chrissy Teigen and John Legend did it. This practice is however controversial and has ethical, religious, legal, and social implications. If you’re doing IVF and have this option, keep in mind that it’s not purely a medical decision.
Also, there has to be an understanding that gender is different from sex. Although you can choose a child’s biological sex with IVF, their gender refers to how they identify and present themselves. For some, sex at birth and gender align, for others, they don’t, and that’s perfectly okay.
Regardless of whether you have a boy or a girl, we wish you a happy, healthy pregnancy.
Good luck on this extraordinary journey!
Source: azfertility.com, healthline.com, npr.org, pampers.com, givelegacy.com, bellybelly.com, theguardian.com
