A question that haunts future parents: will our baby be boy or girl ? How to understand it ? In how many weeks you see? Here are some curiosities .
How to tell if it will be male or female.
Today, a simple ultrasound scan is almost always sufficient to find out the sex of the baby before it is born . In cases where more in-depth examinations are required (such as an amniocentesis or a CVS) it is even possible to find out if the baby will be male or female by analyzing its DNA directly.
All these exams require specific timing, so it takes a little patience. Often, however, one is anxious to have an answer to begin preparing for the arrival of the new family member or to know what the likelihood is that the child will inherit a health problem that can specifically affect boys or girls.
Consequently, before being able to discover the sex of the child with reliable analyzes, it happens to rely on traditional methods which, instead, have very little to be trusted.
Folk beliefs in pregnancy.
One of the most bizarre myths tells that it is possible to predict the sex of the child before his birth with the pendulum test , that is by making his wedding ring hang on the mother’s belly hanging from a hair of the future father. According to the supporters of this method, a ring that begins to move by describing circles in the air would indicate that the unborn child is a female; if it were to start rocking back and forth the ring would indicate that a boy is growing in the belly of the expectant mother. Clearly these are techniques without any scientific basis.
Another popular legend has it that it can be understood from the shape of the belly : if it is pointed or low, the unborn child would be a boy, while if it is higher or more distributed in the central part of the abdomen it would be a girl.
In reality, the shape of the belly is determined by the tone of the abdominal muscles of the mother, by how much weight she has gained after conception, by the conformation of her organism and by the position of the baby.
There are those, however, who try to understand it based on their cravings : it is not true that women expecting a male would crave sweet while those expecting a female would crave more sour foods.
It is also not possible to predict the sex of the baby by combining the mother’s age and the month of conception using the Chinese lunar calendar .
Finally, there are also those who argue that to find out it is enough to add a little gush for domestic pipes to the urine of the future mother. According to one of the most popular theories, if it were a male the pH of the urine would cause the mixture to turn green, but there are also those who tell of the change to other colors.
In any case, this method is not reliable either. In fact, the sex of the baby does not in any way influence the pH of the mother’s urine.
Other unofficial methods used to predict the sex of the unborn child are based on scientific truths which, however, are not applied correctly.
There are those who believe that it is possible to understand if the child is male or female based on the heartbeat : if the heart beats at more than 140 beats per minute it is a girl. In reality, however, up to the twenty-eighth or thirtieth week of gestation both the hearts of males and females beats faster than normal; differences between the two sexes appear only shortly before birth.
Finally, according to scientific studies, women suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of nausea associated with pregnancy, are more likely to be expecting a girl. The problem is triggered by the levels of the hormone hCG (chorionic gonadotropin), which tend to be higher when the baby bump is hosting a baby. However, it is possible to deal with very annoying nausea even when you are expecting a boy. Therefore, even this method cannot be considered reliable.
The ultrasound.
To know if you will become the parents of a male or a female, all that remains is to have patience and wait to be able to undergo tests by science-proof effectiveness.
The most common is ultrasound , a non-invasive analysis that using high frequency sound waves allows you to obtain a digital image of the baby inside the mother’s belly without exposing either the baby or the woman to dangerous procedures.
Generally the ultrasound in which it is possible to understand whether it is a male or a female is the one that is performed between the eighteenth and twenty-second week of gestation. In fact, even if the baby’s sex is already determined at the moment of conception, the differences in the development of the genitals only begin to be visible on ultrasounds later.
In these early stages, the chances of being wrong are still high. In fact, what is observed is not the well-formed genitals, consequently the observation is not always simple and can lead to errors of evaluation. In more advanced stages it is instead possible to distinguish the presence of the penis or the labia majora, and therefore the prediction of sex becomes 80-90% reliable. There are factors such as the position of the baby that still leave the possibility of doubt open, which can make it difficult to visualize the genitals.
A blood test is enough.
To have absolute certainty you need to rely on methods that can directly analyze the child’s DNA.
One of these is amniocentesis , which is the removal of a small amount of amniotic fluid through a thin needle inserted into the belly. This is used for laboratory analyzes that allow you to find out for sure if you are expecting a male or a female by analyzing their DNA.
In the case of villocentesis , however, the sampling can be carried out both through the belly and through the cervix and allows to obtain a sample of the chorionic villi, portions of the placenta that contain genetic material belonging to the child . Also in this case it is therefore possible to have the certainty of the baby’s sex by analyzing his DNA.
However, some of these tests are invasive and not without risks. In particular, both amniocentesis and CVS foresee the risk of abortion, and for this reason they are reserved only for cases in which they are necessary for urgent reasons such as, for example, to understand if there is the possibility that the unborn child is suffering from a genetic disease .
The risks associated with these tests can be avoided by resorting to genetic tests conducted on the mother’s blood, such as the Harmony Test and the Genetic-test, based on the fact that already from the fourth week of pregnancy it is possible to find some of the DNA of the baby in the blood of the pregnant woman. In fact, during the first weeks of pregnancy some of the cells that will form the placenta break naturally, pouring their contents (including DNA) into the maternal blood.
The G-test and the Harmony Test can be conducted starting from the tenth week of gestation, when the amount of DNA of the fetus in circulation is such as to allow reliable results to be obtained. Unfortunately, these are not routine tests, and their cost can be very high. The result, however, is much more reliable, and there will be no more doubts in the hand.
