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Predicting the sex of the baby: how do you know if it will be a boy or a girl?

One of the greatest curiosities of parents in pregnancy is to know if the baby will be a boy or a girl . Predictions about the sex of the baby before it is born are common until it is confirmed by a medical test or an ultrasound, although sometimes they can also fail.

There are precise ways and others based on popular wisdom that have been passed from generation to generation. We will talk about the scientific and non-scientific methods to predict the sex of the baby in pregnancy .

Unscientific methods to predict the sex of the baby

With any of these methods we can have a good time predicting what the sex of the baby will be, but only as a game, since they have no scientific basis . They are simply probabilities, and they do not agree between them, so as you can see the results they give are not very (or not at all) reliable . You will tell us if it matches you or not.

  • Chinese table : there is no scientific evidence on the effectiveness of the Chinese table to know the sex of the baby. It is based on the age of the woman at the time of pregnancy (in the vertical columns) and the month in which the baby is conceived (in the horizontal rows).
  • Maya Table – Apparently the Maya had their own statistical prediction methods that they made themselves. The Mayan table to know the sex of the baby also combines the mother’s age and the month in which she became pregnant.

  • Lunar calendar: the lunar calendar to know the sex of the baby takes into account the date of the day of the baby’s conception, but this is not easy to verify in all cases, especially if the woman has irregular cycles.

  • The shape of the belly : if it is round it will be a girl and if it is pointed, boy, it is a myth. The shape and size of the gut do not predict the sex of the baby. This depends on other factors such as the mother’s physiognomy, the size and position of the baby inside the uterus, the implantation of the placenta, etc …

  • Gypsy formula : The mother’s age is added to the month in which she became pregnant. If it comes out even, it’s a boy, if it comes out odd, it’s a girl.

  • Mobile applications : with new technologies, tools have already come out that supposedly predict the sex of the baby, but they are not reliable at all.

  • Cravings: Cravings in pregnancy are also often related to the sex of the baby, but they are not true.

Scientific methods to know the sex of the baby

  • Blood analysis : consists of extracting a blood sample from the mother to analyze the non-cellular DNA fragments in the plasma, from the fetus. From the seventh week, the presence of these fragments in the mother’s blood are sufficient to evaluate, in more than 95% of cases, whether the fetus is a carrier of the Y chromosome (which would make it a male) or not ( so it would be a woman).

  • Amniocentesis : it is an invasive test that consists of the extraction of amniotic fluid with fetal cells. It is performed to detect congenital problems in the baby, such as Down, Edwards or Turner syndrome, among others, and it also allows us to know the sex.

  • Ultrasound : ultrasound is the most widely used method today to find out the sex of the baby. It is in the second ultrasound, around week 20 and depending on the baby’s position, that the baby’s genitalia can be seen more reliably to determine if it is a boy or a girl.

  • Position of the placenta : also known as the Ramzi method (name of the gynecologist who discovered it) is based on the position of the placenta in relation to the fetus to know the sex of the baby even from the first ultrasound. It ensures that it is 97% reliable even if the genitalia are not seen.

While it is very important for many future dads to know the sex of the baby as soon as possible, there are also those who choose to go to labor without knowing the sex of the baby. It is a matter of preferences. But at the end of the day, the important thing is not that it is a boy or a girl but that it is welcomed, loved and desired from the first moment

Photos | iStockPhoto
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