There was a time when almost everything
about your baby was a surprise, at least until
you met in the delivery room. But now, "you
can select the sex of your baby," says Robin
Elise Weiss, Ph.D., author of Guarantee the
Sex of Your Baby . "And there are a couple
ways to do it."
Sure, in the deep, dark corners of the
Internet, you may have read that putting a
spoon under your bed when you're having
sex means you'll have a girl or that trying to
conceive during a full moon will result in a
boy. Well, no. Those are message board
myths based on folklore and shaky science,
Weiss says. Of course, there are no
guarantees - but here are some options that,
though not 100 percent certain, are at least
more solid than doing a baby dance around
your living room.
In Vitro Fertilization
The only truly guaranteed method of
choosing your baby's sex is through IVF,
says Elizabeth Kennard, M.D., director of the
Reproductive and Endocrinology and
Infertility division at The Ohio State
University Wexner Medical Center. You may
think of IVF strictly within the context of
infertility, but some women choose to do it
for "family balancing" purposes, too.
The process of IVF works like this: You start
taking fertility drugs so your ovaries produce
multiple eggs (typically, just one egg is
released during ovulation). Then the eggs
are removed from your body with a thin
needle. The eggs are then fertilized with
sperm in a petri dish, and then reinserted
into your uterus. Your doctor will know what
chromosomes each egg contains, so you can
choose to be implanted with a certain sex.
Ericsson Method
This method involves separating male and
female sperm from each other. How exactly
do you "catch" sperm of a specific sex? A
sperm sample is placed in thick fluid. Since
male sperm swim faster than female sperm,
you can separate out the super swimmers
from the slower ones. Then you're
inseminated with the sperm that are the sex
of your choice. It's less invasive than IVF,
but still costs money (prices vary based on
where you live, but average around $600)
and not every state has a clinic where this
procedure is done. Proponents of the
method put its success rate around 70
percent, but not all fertility experts agree, as
some are skeptical about any methodologies
aside from IVF.