Okay, I’ve heard there are ways to make it more likely you will conceive a girl than a boy.
Does anyone have any helpful info on this, as I’d like to know…
There are a lot of people who claim to have methods to increase the odds and they’d like to take your money. As far as I recall, there was only one method that really produces results and it involves putting semen through some sort of high-tech sperm-sorting machine and then using artificial insemination.
I can’t why anyone would pay that much, except maybe in the case of some known sex-linked genetic defect.
I heard that if you have sex standing up that you would be more likely to have a boy.
I’ve never had the urge to put that theory to the test… well the position is interesting (definitely urges to test that out 
)… the not the baby part-- anyway it sounds like an ol’ wives tale to me!
Choosing Your Baby’s Sex: What the Old Wives Say
Choosing Your Baby’s Sex: What the Scientists Say
In the “scientific” link, I see several methods mentioned. The most promising seems to be “flow cytometry”, using a DNA detector to divvy up sperm and then artificial insemination to have the chosen sperm fertilize the ovum.
Or, what cher3 said. (Curses! Pipped to the post again!)
Choose a man who has a proven track record of producing male heirs.
Follow Arnold W’s advice: have a flow cytometry on his sperm sample done and have this batch injected artifically.
Follow old wives tales.
Somewhere along the line you might have a son, altho I prefer the old fashion yet pleasurable shotgun approach with its fifty fifty odds.
Kiffa:(and I apoliogze for changing my name on you, and taking away your exalted peachiness):
My mate has not produced Any heirs, so thats out.
I believe I read somewhere about if you have sex at the earliest time of ovulation, it’ll be a boy; after a week, a girl.
This worked for me once, when I had my son, but obviously, theres a 50/50 chance either way.
I also read about douching with alkaline or acidic compounds to kill off the sturdier male spermatazoa.
I guess I will eventually report the findings.
No, sorry those really don’t work with the efficacy that you would want. Pay for what you want or go with whatever happens.
No apologies needed for changing peaches8 altho it might be confusing for some folks who haven’t caught on yet. I changed primarily for other reasons. Kiffa it is and Kiffa it will stay. Smiles, and congrats on your wedding plans with Snark.
Actually, it’s the X chromosome carrying sperm that are sturdier (women kick ass once again!). Not much sturdier, though; I think the breakdown of newborn babies nationwide is something like 48% male, 52% female. My husband believes the deeper he fishes, so to speak, the greater the chance of having a boy. So what do we have? A little girl who looks incredibly mischievious no matter how frilly the dress you put her in. As to why it takes so many thousands of sperm to fertilize one egg…it’s because not one of them will stop and ask for directions. (Sorry, I just had to work that in. 
)
Another old wive’s tale: have your mate take up jogging if you want a girl. I read that somewhere.
LOL! Oh right, that’ll be the day when snark goes jogging!
Nothing works except the flow cytofluoremetry method.
But consider flow cytofluorometry. Do you really want to use a sperm for fathering your children tha has been: collected in a bottle, immersed in a solution of dye that makes it possible for a machine using laser light to tell whether it is carrying XX or XY chromosomes, squeezed through narrow tube in which it is illuminated by a laser, blasted (or not blasted, depending on how the machine is set up) by a jet of liquid into a container for sperm of its “sex,” and finally transferred by the proverbial turkey baster into a womb? I think you’d have to be really dead set against one sex or the other to put yourself and your sperm through all of that.
“Recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics
shows that more males are born each year (51.2 percent) than females (48.8 percent).” (from the site Arnold mentioned). Although more boys are born than girls, girls are more likely to survive. By late childhood girls outnmuber boys.
The sperm separation would be wanted, I should think, for the religious sorts, who have offspring to fulfill some creed.
There was a story in a newspaper about a Jewish couple celebrating because after 10 or 11 of one sex, they finally got the other one.
In cases like that I’d say pre-select, procreate and then get busy living.
Actually, Vanilla, you’re on the right track but got it backwards. The claim is that Y-carrying sperm, which produce boys, are faster, but X-carrying sperm, which make girls, live longer. Therefore, folk wisdom says, if you want a boy, have sex as close to ovulation as possible; if you want a girl, have sex several days before. (The egg is only fertile for about a day after it leaves the ovary, so you don’t want to wait too long after ovulation if you want to have a baby!)
Just one problem: it doesn’t work. It only takes one sperm to fertilize the egg, after all, and it’s that sperm that determines the sex of the result. Averages aren’t particularly useful at determining the result of a single incident.
Both my husband and I come from families with many more boys than girls in the youngest generation; though I bet some couples have tried to make a girl, the boys keep a-coming. (We didn’t try anything special, we have two lovely boys, and we are FINISHED thankyouverymuch.)
kiffa said:
Can this be true? I’ve always thought it was, but everyone tells me it is about a 50/50 shot, even with my family history. The last 12 births on my father’s side of the family have been male… and digging further, it’s 14 out of 15. That seems like too much of a coincidence to me. My brother just had a son, so it continues.
If this is possible, my question is why is it possible? Shouldn’t X and Y sperm be produced in roughly the same amounts?
This is only a WAG but if a man carried a dominant gene on his X chromosome that was lethal to any embryo carrying it he could father only boys and no girls.
It’s a frog!
It would be nice to know before hand. I’m eager to see if my sister has a boy or a girl, cause I can’t wait to find out if I’m an aunt or an uncle.
This is somewhat of a WAG, but still a somewhat informed one:
It’s totally against what we all know to be true about genetics, but in my mom’s family, girls are rare in my generation. No idea why, but of 16 first cousins, I only have 4 females. Now, this is still not entirely outside of the realm of random chance, but there may be some more subtle genetics going on than just whichever sperm happens to get through. Oh, and of the 4 girls, only 1 is the daughter of one of my mom’s sisters. All of the other three are daughters of my mom’s brothers. Again, still within random chance posibility, but also a large enough sample to make you wonder.
the acidity of the ‘family secretions’ can affect gender by OOPS killing off one gender’s worth of sperm (can’t remember which prefers what pH). Go too far acidic, and you kill em all (one relatively rare reason for infertility). that tendency can run in families. And they guy can kill off his own, too. So, technically it is possible for a guy to be shooting more Ys than Xs, or more Xs than Ys, but also possible for women to be accidentally killing off one or the other. And, of course, pH probably isn’t totally stable, so it may vary all over the place based on her cycle.
Still, it is a rare problem, and probably even rarer to be on that fine line where more of one gender die than the other. I know ONE woman with a pH problem, and she ended up adopting (couldn’t afford to try the test tube approach, and all attempts to fix her pH through diet/meds failed).
Anyone remember the study that suggested that what gender you had first shifts your pH and makes it (slightly) more likely that you’ll have either the same gender or the opposite for the next child???