Baby Gender Predictor – Pregnancy Ultrasound

Jul 8, 2009 by May Hammond

Most people when considering how to identify the gender of their baby will think of using ultrasound. Around for a number of years now, the obstetric ultrasound is a non-invasive technique that can accurately identify the gender of your baby as early as 12 weeks into your pregnancy. This article introduces the basic features of a pregnancy ultrasound answers a mother’s common questions.

What is ultrasound?
The term ‘ultrasound’ describes sound waves at a very high frequency. Obstetric ultrasound uses sound waves between 3.5 to 7.0 megahertz. 

How does a pregnancy ultrasound work?
In simple terms, the ultrasound apparatus consists of a small transducer connected to a computing unit and monitor display. The transducer is placed lightly on the mother’s stomach where it emits high frequency sound waves that are reflected back and also recorded by the transducer. The sound waves reflected have different frequencies depending on the density of the material they have passed through. The computer analyzes the returned frequencies and visually displays the results on the monitor as an image that is called a sonagram.

What will I feel during a pregnancy ultrasound?
Ultrasound is a completely pain-free and essentially non-invasive medical technique. The doctor or nurse shall first place a gel onto your abdomen which may feel cold. The gel helps the transducer glide more smoothly over your skin and is important to improve the conduction of the sound waves. The sound waves are too high for the human ear to detect. The transducer does produce some heat but this is minimized as the transducer is moved over different areas of your abdomen during what is only a short scan.

What will my baby feel during a pregnancy ultrasound?
The baby’s feelings and response during the scan will vary depending on the stage of the pregnancy and the development of the baby. After 16 weeks of pregnancy you may have already felt your baby kicking and a baby at this stage of development might react to the pressure of the transducer in the same way as it may respond to the weight of your hand. As mentioned above, the transducer does emit some heat but this is unlikely to be felt by the baby because of the movement of the transducer and the short timescale of the scan. The sound waves themselves cannot be heard by the baby although some studies warn that deflected sound waves may be audible. The consensus is, however, that risks are minimal and far outweighed by the significant diagnostic benefits of the scan.

What will I see during the ultrasound scan?
The monitor will display a real-time representation of the area under the transducer, with liquids showing as black and matter as varying shades of gray, white or other color depending on the system used. The image portrayed has been likened to that of a torch being shined into the abdomen. The quality of modern ultrasound imagery is of a sufficient sharpness to show a developing baby’s organs, limbs and skeletal structure. Note, however, that the clarity of any particular scan will vary and it is normally necessary for the transducer to be moved across at different angles to display alternate ‘slices’ of the area being scanned. The age and development of the baby affects the detail of what can be shown, including other factors such as possible obstruction of the umbilical cord or placenta. Also the presence of liquid is important for the conduction of the sound waves and therefore the quantity of amniotic fluid and also the volume of the mother’s bladder affect the scan. As early as 6 weeks into the pregnancy, obstetric ultrasounds are also able to play the sound of the baby’s heartbeat which is often a defining moment for most mothers.  

What are the benefits of doing a pregnancy ultrasound scan?
Conducting an ultrasound during early pregnancy provides numerous diagnostic benefits including some or all of the following:

• Confirming presence and number foetuses
• Measurements of the foetus to confirm gestational age
• Analysis of growth and development
• Assesing cardiac health
• Position of the baby and placenta
• Quantity of amniotic fluid
• Identification of possible malformations
• Determination of baby gender

In the next post Baby Gender Predictor – Ultrasound: How soon and how accurate? we shall look in more detail at how the ultrasound can show the baby gender, and also how early an ultrasound can be used as a reliable baby gender predictor.

 

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Chinese Pregnancy Calendar – Fact, Fiction or Fun?

Jun 27, 2009 by May Hammond

The Chinese pregnancy calendar is one baby gender predictor that has become a popular and widely-used tool by pregnant mothers and also by families planning pregnancy. Some women trying to conceive a boy (TCB) or trying to conceive a girl (TCG), place a central emphasis on the planned lunar month of conception correlating to the mother’s age according to the Chinese pregnancy calendar. Similarly, newly-pregnant mothers quickly turn to this baby gender predictor calendar to see whether the little impending bundle of joy is destined to be dressed in pretty pink or baby blue.

So does this baby gender predictor merit such attention? Or should this tool be placed firmly on the shelf of other old-wives-tales to be plucked down only for amusement purposes only? Let’s go back and dig a little deeper into that ancient Chinese tomb to find out.

A notable 52% of Chinese pregnancy calendar predictions produce the result of boy, whereas the outcome of only 48% of tests result in a girl. But before we criticize the Chinese pregnancy calendar for straying from the expected 50:50 ratio of boy to girl, let us first compare this to gender of actual births recorded. Taking the US as an example, there are 1.05 boys born to every girl, which is equivalent to a percentage of 51.2% male births to 48.8% females. Also the calendar ratio is the summation of number of lunar months by gender, not the actual occurrences of births. This means that even though fewer months produce girls, these months may contain more births and therefore give a different percentage.

Next we can take a look at which months are more likely to result in conceptions of a boy or girl:

What is striking with this are the number months that are considerably more likely to produce conception of boys. January, February and particularly July have a strong tendency to conceive boys. In contrast, those months favouring female births do so only to a smaller degree and still involve significant probability of the conception being a boy. The exception is the month of April which the Chinese pregnancy calendar says has a strong tendency to conceive a girl.

Now let us consider how the age of the mother determines the gender:

The horizontal axis shows the mother’s age against the vertical axis which shows the number of months that will produce a boy. The graph shows that a young mother of 18 or 20 years of age is more likely to conceive a boy for 10 out 12 months of the year, and a similar trend reoccurs at the age of thirty.

The corresponding graph for the likelihood of conceiving a girl shows the best age to conceive is at age 21 and 22. If this period of fertility is missed then the age of 29 also has eight months of high probability of conceiving a female child.

If the Chinese pregnancy calendar is true…

So what can we determine from the Chinese calendar baby gender predictor? If it is true then there are clearly defined strategies for women who want to conceive a boy or girl. For a boy, a mother’s age of 18 or 20 and attempts to conceive during the months from April onwards are optimum conditions suggesting a 94% probability of conceiving a boy. Similarly, anyone wishing for a girl should concentrate their efforts during the ages 21 and 22. Attempts from March onwards at this age should result in an 85% probability of conceiving a girl. Not fair for those of us who are a bit longer in the tooth? There are still excellent opportunities to conceive a boy at ages 30 and 31, or a girl at 36 and 37.

Problems with the Chinese pregnancy calendar

The Chinese pregnancy calendar puts baby gender prediction a little too much into the black or white (or at least pink and blue). If it was true,  then there would be substantial supporting records of periods of the year that women of a particular age conceive nothing but girls, or nothing but boys. The sensible among us know that this does not happen.  Hospitals in the West (or anywhere else for that matter) do not annually report anomalies of flocks of nineteen-year-old women giving birth to nothing but boys.
 
Defendants of the Chinese pregnancy calendar could argue that the blocks of consecutive months that produce either a boy or girl actually have a low output in terms of numbers and are balanced by the remaining months of the year that have a high output of the other gender. Again, however, this is a peculiar trend and an anomaly that is not empirically reported by hospitals or any other institutions. There are no reputable gender studies that isolate a statistical significance to the number of conceptions of a particular gender in correlation to the lunar month of conception.

The calendar also struggles to satisfactorily explain other situations such as the occurrence of mixed gender twins and other multiple conceptions. Although the statistics vary by ethnicity and location, around 1% percent of births are multiple births. The Chinese pregnancy calendar does not provide a method to predict mixed gender in these cases.

Chinese pregnancy calendar conclusions

Mothers with their scientific hats on would probably just consider the calendar as just a bit of fun and not attach more than an entertainment value on any of the results. However if you are more in tune with you spiritual feelings and instincts, you may be able to gain a deeper insight into the accuracy of the Chinese pregnancy calendar. Either way, there is no harm in factoring-in the lunar month and your age from conception in any conception family planning.

Whatever your own conclusions on the calendar, if you are already pregnant and wish to know your baby’s  gender, our recommendation at baby-gender-predictor.net is for you to seek advice from your general practitioner regarding other identification methods that you can also read about elsewhere on this site.

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Baby Gender Predictor

Jun 14, 2009 by May Hammond

Ease your mind in the early stages of pregnancy with a Baby Gender Predictor.

Will I have a boy or a girl? This simple, yet deep-rooted, question is one that every woman will ask herself at some time in her life. And, for any woman, the path to finding the answer is often followed by a flow of complex and sometimes conflicting emotions. 

Perhaps you have always wanted a boy and would do anything to be able to click your fingers and have a baby gender predictor to shine a light on whether your dream will come true. Or, like me, you experience a deep feeling and connection with the notion of having a daughter. Like it’s fate and has to happen, but at the same time you know deep down that lurking in the shadows, behind your dream, is the possibility that it may never come true.

Whether you want a boy or a girl, that surreal yet unforgettable moment of discovering you are pregnant can release a rush of different feelings. Positive feelings of joy, delight, relief (or even disbelief!), often go hand-in-hand with underlying feelings of anxiety and even fear. Any mother will tell you that finding a way to manage these unpredictable emotions, especially at a time when your hormones have just set off on the roller-coaster ride of their life, can be a real challenge.

Also everyone’s situation and journey to becoming pregnant is different. Did you plan to get pregnant? Are you really ready to have a baby? Can you keep the baby? What do you do? Who should you tell? Who can help? Is it really the boy or the girl you always dreamed of?

Having a baby gender predictor to quickly answer the question of ‘boy or girl?’ is without doubt an important step in the gradual and healthy process of puttings these feelings in place. Knowing your baby’s gender is a big, big help and effectively begins the relationship between mother and child. Just knowing that the sensation inside of you is a ‘he’ or ‘she’ as opposed to an ‘it’ changes everything.

For me, it had taken a long time to finally conceive and I was desperate know whether I was having a girl. Whilst I was battling with my excitement at being pregnant and yearning for it to be a girl, I was also supressing a feeling of guilt and almost an irrational fear of discovering it was a boy. People just don’t tell you to expect feelings like this, let alone how to deal with them.

This excitement and anxiety can be dealt with efficiently in today’s world thanks to the improvements in prenatal care and also the availability of reliable and risk-free baby gender predictor products. This can be the beginning of a mother getting in control of her new life-changing situation.

These days there is a lot more help out there for women who are, or want to be pregnant. As it happened, my first baby was an adorable boy, who I would not change for the world. Yes, I still wanted a girl, but over time I  came to better understand my feelings as a mother and also learnt that there are natural paths that a woman can exlplore to help her have the baby of the gender of her choice.

Remember that it is perfectly normal to have apprehensions and aspirations over being pregnant. The miraculous ability of bringing life into this world is an amazing pillar of solidarity in any woman’s life, and therefore certainly a topic I think we should feel open to share our feelings about!

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