Nine months is a long time to wait, especially for the surprise of finding out if you are having a boy or a girl. Even with 4-D ultrasounds available, some couples insist on waiting it out until the baby arrives to find out if the baby is a boy or girl. However, curiosity may get the best of you and you may try to figure out the sex of your child by using one (or many) pregnancy myth(s) for kicks. However, as one mom said, the results were inconclusive as she determined seven pregnancy myths pointed to her having a boy the first time around and another seven myths pointed to her having a girl. In the end, she ended up having a boy.
What follows is a look at six pregnancy myths and their strength in predicting a boy or girl baby. It does not appear that these myths hold up well if you happen to be having twins or other multiples. To determine the sex of each baby in those instances, the best bet may be to use the ultrasound.
Your baby is what you eat
According to some myths, your pregnancy cravings could be forth-telling of your baby being a boy or a girl. If you crave sweets or dairy, it could mean you are having a girl; on the other hand, if you have suddenly become a meat-lover, it could mean you are having a boy. One mom found this myth to hold true in her case – she would drink “several gallons of milk in any given; in fact, I craved milk so much, I used to bring gallons of it to work so that I could drink it throughout the day,” when she was pregnant with her daughter. On the flip side, this same mom craved cheeseburgers and eggs when she was pregnant with her son. I, too, as a mother of both boys and a girl, would say I tended to have more of a sweet tooth when pregnant with my baby girl. I’m not so sure if I necessarily craved meats more during the pregnancies with my boys, although I tended to favor BBQ ribs more during my pregnancies with my boys than with my daughter. Frankly, I blamed most of my unusual pregnancy cravings on the taste buds of my husband!
The baby’s heartbeat
Of all the pregnancy myths, this one may actually have some scientific merit! According to this myth, if the heartbeat is high (typically 140 beats per minute or more), it is indicative of a girl baby. Likewise, a slower heartbeat is indicative of a boy baby. Proof of scientific merit in this myth would be a friend of mine who is a family doctor instantly said, “It’s a girl!” when she found out the heart rate was around 160 beats per minute when we were pregnant with my daughter.
Be aware that if you think you’re having a girl early on in the pregnancy because of the heartbeat rate and then later a boy, don’t be worried over the confusion. I, too, wondered what the different heart rates meant. My OB explained to me the first time I was pregnant that the heartbeat will slow down a little as your baby grows. After all, the average adult heart beats per minute is much less than that of a baby’s or child’s. So, if your baby’s heart rate is near the cutoff of 140 beats per minute, you may not be able to tell if you’re having a boy or a girl strictly based on the heart rate. That was the case with both of my boys. I will say, that in my experiences, it would appear that the faster heart rate was associated with a girl.
Chinese conception chart
This method is based on your age at conception and the month in which you conceived your child. In some explanations you may also need to consider the mother’s birth day month and year. My husband and I were first introduced to this idea by one of his co-workers when I was pregnant with our first child. There are different websites with information about the Chinese conception chart. While for some families it seemed to work as a predictor, for us, it mainly predicted the exact opposite of what we ended up having in each case.
Morning Sickness
Most women will experience morning sickness to some degree during the early part of their pregnancy. One thing I heard often was that the sicker you were, the more likely you were to have a girl. If that was the case, I would have ended up with one boy and two girls instead of two boys and one girl. There may be truth or a high probability of coincidence that the sicker you are the more likely you are to have a girl. There is a belief that the additional hormones in the baby girl make the mother more sick during the pregnancy.
My personal belief is that women tend to be sicker during subsequent pregnancies, especially if they are relatively close together. Your body hasn’t fully recovered from the last pregnancy; you are now caring for at least one other child who is an active toddler or preschooler; and you are not able to rest and to pamper yourself like you were during that first pregnancy. In fact, my OB commented that he has seen many third pregnancies just knock women for a loop for whatever reason and it has nothing to do with having a boy or girl baby.
Instincts
Some people will ask if you have a gut feeling as to if you are having a boy or a girl. Some people believe they will dream certain things and that will definitively indicate if they are having a boy or girl baby. For me, my instincts were right on the money during all three of my pregnancies.
During my first pregnancy, I remember dreaming about pro wrestling and immediately decided I was having a boy. My husband liked watching pro wrestling and I had not seen or heard anything about pro wrestling to have seeped into my unconsciousness. I wouldn’t no why else I was dreaming about this form of entertainment. Later into the pregnancy, I did have a dream where I clearly saw a boy baby. I wasn’t sure in my dream but the nurse showed me that physically there was no question about the baby being a boy. Indeed, when we had our first child, I remember craning my neck to really see that what they told me was true – we had a boy!
During my second pregnancy, I believe I had two dreams. In one dream I saw two children playing and the children were both boys. In another dream, everyone kept telling me I had a girl and went so far as to dress the baby in girl clothes. But I stripped away the clothes and took off the diaper and said “See. It’s a boy!” Once the diaper was off there was no question that the baby I was holding was a boy. Again, although I was quite sick during the pregnancy making many people believe I was having a girl, our second son was born.
Then during my third pregnancy, I had trouble having any definitive dream until late into my pregnancy. Any dreams that I had I could somewhat twist around to make fit with having another boy. But the day or two after one of my good friends gave birth to a girl I had that clear dream where I saw a baby and the baby looked an awful lot like my sons but there was something about the baby that made it clear to me that I was looking at a baby girl. In the end, I did give birth to our baby girl.
Now, children may also have some good instincts. My oldest son, while pregnant with our daughter, insisted he was having a baby sister, even though we didn’t find out until really late into the pregnancy. Other moms have also mentioned how siblings have a sixth sense as to whether they are getting a baby brother or baby sister. However, my nephew who was almost four at the time, thought he knew better than the ultrasound technician, a radiologist, and his dad who is also a radiologist. All three confirmed that the ultrasound showed he and his wife were having a girl. His dad knelt down and told his son that it looked like he was getting a baby sister. My nephew looked up at his dad and said, “It’s OK daddy, but I think you’re wrong!”
These myths are meant to be fun and in no way replaces modern medicine or technology. I, for one, preferred not knowing if we were having a boy or a girl just because I wanted to be happy in either case and not be built up for one child, say a girl, and be surprised to have a different child, a boy, at birth. However, even I had curiosity about whom we would welcome into the world in the end and during our third pregnancy, even when we were told that we were going to have a girl, via an ultrasound, I still was skeptical! What mattered more in the end was that I held a beautiful, healthy baby, my own child, when all was said and done and the nine months of waiting for this bundle of joy was well worth the wait!
