Trying for a girl

Thom and I have had a girl's name picked out for a daughter since before we were married. Audrey. We are Audrey Hepburn fans, but we also just love the name. It's classic, but not too common. When we found out we were having a boy last time, we spent a lot of time choosing a name. And we didn't have a solid second choice, so if we have another boy, we'll be hitting the baby name books for sure.

But even more than having a name picked out, we'd kind of like to have a least one son and one daughter. I had heard there are theories about influencing the gender of your baby, but didn't know much about it until my friend Heidi leant me a book called Taking Charge of your Fertility. She said there was a chapter on trying for either a boy or a girl, so I thought I'd check it out.

The book is amazing. It has so much information on how women's bodies work, I think every woman should have this book. I thought at first that it was about the rhythm method, something I learned a little about from my Catholic upbringing. But the book isn't anti-birth control. The family planning aspect is just for women who don't want to use hormones to avoid pregnancy. It talks about how to chart your cycles to learn when you are most fertile and how to use that information to avoid or achieve pregnancy, using barrier methods when necessary.

There are several theories about gender selection, but the one this book discusses involves timing. The theory is that sperm carrying a Y chromosome (boy sperm) are fast swimmers, but don't live as long and aren't as hardy as girl sperm. So to increase the chance of having a boy, you'd want to wait until you ovulate. The boy sperm have a better shot at arriving to the egg first. For a girl, try a few days before that. The boy sperm are more likely to die off before the egg is released. They cite some evidence such as the fact that babies born as a result of artificial insemination tend to be boys since the procedure is performed as close to ovulation as possible. And that men with certain jobs (deep sea divers) that create a hostile environment for sperm tend to have more girls.

I have since heard that this theory has been discredited, but I figure there is little harm in trying. The only downside with trying for a girl is that it reduces your chance of conceiving in general since you are basically avoiding the most fertile days. And I've heard that in any given month, you only have about a 20% chance to begin with. If it takes too long to conceive, we'll change our plans. But it will be an interesting experiment.