Sometimes, being really fertile is a bad thing.

This post is mostly a vent, but I'd love to hear from other people who have had similar experiences, and maybe get some advice/reassurance for a possible future blue sway. This is my first time posting, so hopefully I do this right!

From what I understand, a more fertile couple is more likely to conceive a boy. However, in my personal experience, being really fertile can actually be a bad thing if you want a boy. I have three children, two girls and a boy, all of whom I love dearly. My older daughter (7) was conceived while my husband was wearing a condom, I had just started working on my Masters, and we had no intention of getting pregnant, let alone gender swaying. But in all honesty, I had hoped she was a boy. My son (2), meanwhile, was conceived when we trying to get pregnant and maximizing fertility, but before I knew much about gender swaying. Lastly, my younger daughter (3 months) was conceived while we were using the natural family planning method right before we were ready to start preparing for a blue sway. Unfortunately, we were doing some fairly girl-friendly stuff: I was intermittent fasting to lose weight before letting myself put weight back on for a blue sway (silly, I know, but I got it into my head that I should do this), we would have done the deed fairly far out from ovulation, hubby had only just quit vaping, I seem to recall he had a fever, etc.. I was disappointed but not surprised when I found out we were having a girl. With both of my girls, I feel like I conceived under sub-optimal conditions, and wouldn't have conceived at all if I wasn't so darn fertile, leaving me free to sway blue.

I love my baby girl to pieces and I don't wish she hadn't happened or that she is someone else. But there is still a part of me that is disappointed that I didn't get my second boy and that I didn't get a chance to (1) try swaying and (2) conceive intentionally. I think I would have been totally fine with a failed sway, but getting pregnant prematurely has really stuck in my craw. There is a small chance that we will try for a fourth child in a few years and attempt a blue sway. However, I am afraid of my odds and I am afraid of another accidental pregnancy in the meantime. And I also feel like maybe I have no right to have another child if I'm really invested in the gender. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Similar experiences?

All your feelings are totally valid.

I had to check and make sure I didn't get hacked cause our stories are very similar except I have 3 girls [emoji23]

1 - weren't trying but we were having sex like everyday so I'm sure that swayed super pink and I was super thin (hadn't heard of swaying yet)

2- trying and knew about swaying but was on a timeline and I feel like we didn't give it long enough to sway blue, and our daughter was only 1 so close spacing.

3- this was our suprise baby and I had the same feelings you did about not getting the chance. I had done so much research, we were fully committing to a blue lifestyle but natural family planning failed me due to being super fertile and we got pregnant with a condom baby. My second was only 9 months old. I was disappointed we didn't get to execute our plan and give it the old college try lol

Now I'm unsure of if 4 will ever happen due to the way our economy and country are headed. I'm very grateful for the kids I do have and am still undecided about how hard we would hit a sway if we do have a fourth. I feel like my (intense) feelings after #3 being a suprise helped through a kind of grieving process about it and have let a lot of those feelings go but it was a long process

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We do seem to see a lot more girls conceived in accidental pregnancies, and many of my longtime blue swayers do end up getting pregnant without intending to. I don't know why that is, exactly. Some of them never get quite brave enough to try and go on sort of halfheartedly swaying but never attempting, till they end up getting pregnant. Others end up getting pregnant very soon after having had a baby without meaning to, or decide that they need to get ready for a vacation/event and start trying to lose weight only to get pregnant during that time. It's something I have on my radar to warn people about, because it is something we've seen with some frequency.

That having been said, there are certainly many of us (myself included) who did the exact same thing when swaying pink - got pregnant while gaining weight to lose, in months that we really intended to take off, that sort of thing, and did still get boys. It was definitely a very bitter pill for me to swallow when, during a month I was taking off, while I was regaining weight thinking that I should gain weight and then relose it, I ended up getting pregnant with my 4th son. At that point I truly thought the door was closed and it just about killed me not getting to have a good sway. It's not just ladies who want boys who this happens to! I do absolutely understand and agree that somehow not even getting to TRY the sway just makes it cut so deep. I completely concur with Polaris that your feelings are totally valid!

(ps - this is why I hate to see people losing weight to gain for blue and gaining weight to lose for pink...it never seems to work out the way we planned.)

All that having been said, we also have a group of blue swayers who go on and on not getting pregnant, seemingly for no reason, doing everything to boost fertility, only to end up with a girl after a very long struggle with fertility. As a result of that phenomenon, I can never be able to see conceiving quickly as a bad thing for anyone trying to conceive, but especially not those who want boys. Even though it didn't happen for you the last two times, getting pregnant very easily tends to be a GOOD thing for future blue sways. It's a bummer that it didn't work out the way we would have hoped, and I really feel for you that it worked out that way, but as for me personally I can never agree that being too fertile is bad. The people I worry about the most in their blue sways are the couples who do not conceive for no apparent reason, for many months or even years, even when we are doing everything to help them conceive (it's not like with pink swayers, where they're doing lots of things that may make conception harder, these people are truly doing everything to boost their fertility and it just doesn't happen for reasons we don't know.) Now, even with them, we have pretty good success rates for blue, but it is a group of people that I really do empathize with and worry about above all others.

If we didn't have a "right" to another child, most of us on here wouldn't have the kids we have! It is so very normal to have mixed emotions about adding a child to the family for all sorts of reasons. I know people IRL who don't want another baby because they are worried about their figure, the kids having to share rooms, getting a new car, all sorts of rather mundane and even petty things. We all know people who have children for the "wrong" reason (air quotes because I don't believe any child can ever truly be "wrong"!!) like wanting to fix their relationship, wanting to have a certain parenting experience, because their family or society thinks they should. Having gender desire is no worse than any of those reasons and there is absolutely no reason we should be any harsher on ourselves than others are. While of course it's always great to do some mental work on our gender desire before getting pregnant, it never really goes away 100% for any of us. Be gentle with yourself - we are all in the same boat with wanting that particular family we had in our mind's eye! If you wouldn't chastise any of us for feeling this way, please don't chastise yourself either!

Polaris, thank you so much for sharing your story! It's funny how similar our experiences have been. I'm so sorry you didn't end up with the family you dreamed of... it seems like life really got in the way of your blue sways! I'm glad to hear you're pretty well at peace with how it's all worked out. The reality is, we both could have done everything right and still ended up in the same place.

Atomic, thank you for your response! If I do sway again, I will definitely not play around with my weight right beforehand. But I'm curious - is it the actual weight gain / loss that is important for swaying, or simply (already) being heavier / thinner? And if you're swaying blue specifically, I understand that both fat and muscle are important... but is one more important than the other? I gain both fat and muscle easily, and typically use exercise and muscle mass to manage my weight more than diet. I usually maintain averageish weight while carrying a decent of amount of muscle.

Despite some disappointment over my premature third pregnancy (not the baby herself!), at the end of the day, I really am grateful that I'm not looking at it from the other side - truly, my fertility and the three children I already have are precious gifts. I just tend to beat myself up when things don't go according to plan. And then beat myself again for having a plan!

Thanks again for weighing in!

It's none of those things, it's how that stuff affects your body (probably hormonally, but it may be hormones + other chemistry going on). So if a person had the "boy hormones" going on it wouldn't matter if they'd gained or lost weight, and we know from firsthand experience that thin people and heavy people can have either boys and girls, so it's not straightforward with that either. Based on studies plus observations, we can tell that gaining muscle mass (and this often requires weight gain as well) may help make your hormones, or whatever else is swaying, more blue friendly, and losing weight and shrinking muscle/losing body fat may make a person more pink friendly. But it's what comes WITH the weight situation that matters and not just a box you can tick on weight loss or gain.

I do think that your history of getting pregnant fast is a good sign! Keep us posted and let me know if I can help!!

Hey this topic hits home right now for me!


I had my second baby girl last year after a failed blue sway and I guess I have some thoughts around gender swaying in general.

Do you think it's possible that someone can be girl or boy friendly in lifestyle/diet/personality (all the things we discuss here) and still get multiple opposites like 2-3 girls/boys? I do think that there might be underlying genetic factors that drive this (something we can't control or might not even know about) and all those factors we discuss on here might only be a small % that's contributing to swaying, that's also possible right?

My husband seems to think that we have what we have and people get multiple kids of the same gender just purely by chance? He did say that if someone gets up to 10+ kids of the same gender then maybe there's something going on there but we also don't see this very often. He believes if we just kept having kids eventually we will get an opposite but people just don't have enough kids to get there or entertain that idea.

I can use anecdotal evidence all day to think of why this person has a boy and i don't etc. but I am just curious as to how much we can really influence the outcome. I know we can't possibly measure anything scientifically here or conduct a full scope experiment about this topic. Anyway, just a thought since this is on my mind a lot and I am obsessed with finding out answers. I feel like a nut job obsessing over something i don't have complete control over.

All of this being said, I am now currently expecting baby#3. I do think it is another baby girl because this was an oops/1 attempt completely unplanned. My 2nd girl is only 10months old. I am just a little bummed out but it is what it is!

I was also pregnant when my second girl is 11 months and we had boy he is 7 months now but when my second girl(not planned)i was followed diet and changed my food habits.i understood where i was wrong and when i am carrying boy time i always thinks its girl again but he is my stressbuster[emoji4]


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Oh gosh I'm so sorry, this has been open at the top of my browser all this time and I didn't even realize it was there! You guys, please always feel free to bump your posts if I don't respond in a reasonable time.

I want you to take a moment and think about these things in terms of percentages. Because none of us can really be 100% set for a boy or a girl - the whole human race would have died out a long time ago if that was the case - there clearly is a huge element of luck that comes into play. In our results, the highest success rates we've ever gotten is about 80%, both pink and blue have had brief periods of time where the success rates got up that high, but it was unsustainable (sustainable results are more in the 70% range and I aim at 75.). I have never promised anyone 100% success rate with swaying, in fact quite the opposite.

So let's call 80% the hypothetical best we can do with swaying. This is the most anyone can ever be "set" for a particular gender. Now, imagine that instead of dry old percentages, you have a bowl of M and Ms where 80 of them are blue, and 20 are pink. It is entirely, absolutely possible for a person to randomly take 3 M and M's from the jar and get all pink, even with the absolutely highest success rate we can get.

Let's say that you are a person who is naturally very pink friendly. You start off 80% likely to have a girl, and with lifestyle factors/swaying, you got a 20% boost on those numbers. (And a 20% sway is HUGE! That is not just a small % point, that is a massive amount of difference) Now there are 60 pink and 40 blue candies to choose from. You've had a great sway but still may be somewhat more likely to have a girl. It doesn't mean swaying didn't work - it did work, it just wasn't a magic guarantee. But if luck is on your side you could still get a boy.

And then with swaying you got yourself to 50-50 - you could still absolutely get a girl after swaying for a boy - but you STILL had a good sway. Even with 60% blue, 40% pink, (a person who goes from 80% pink friendly to 60% blue friendly would have triumphant, amazing sway, but swaying just isn't a guarantee) you could still get a girl. It sucks, but it's just the way the luck of it all works. - even with a great sway, there's still a chance. Heck, I know a lady who did Microsort back when it was legal in the US, and she got a boy with 92% X sperm. Just think of taking those M and M's from a cup and you'll see what I mean - it is always possible to grab the "wrong" color.

What we're trying to do with swaying is IMPROVE the odds. Your husband is right, if you just kept having kids forever you would most likely get your desired gender. But most of us don't WANT to keep trying forever. Most of us have room in our families only for one or two more kids, and so we want to go in with the most "right" M and M's in our bowl to pick from. It can easily be that the cards don't fall our way, but still we want to be in with our best chance we can possibly get.

Since 2011, the first year of this site, we have gotten an average success rate of 70% for both pink and blue swayers. The chances that that would happen randomly are astronomical - I have an essay explaining that here: https://atomicsagebrush.com/2019/03/...ndom-thoughts/ So while it's not as reliable as a study, if we really were just "lucking" our way into people getting babies of a certain gender, we should see some years where our results were only 50-50 and we just don't see that. We see about the same success rate year after year.

Have you found out gender yet??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by atomic sagebrush

Oh gosh I'm so sorry, this has been open at the top of my browser all this time and I didn't even realize it was there! You guys, please always feel free to bump your posts if I don't respond in a reasonable time.

I want you to take a moment and think about these things in terms of percentages. Because none of us can really be 100% set for a boy or a girl - the whole human race would have died out a long time ago if that was the case - there clearly is a huge element of luck that comes into play. In our results, the highest success rates we've ever gotten is about 80%, both pink and blue have had brief periods of time where the success rates got up that high, but it was unsustainable (sustainable results are more in the 70% range and I aim at 75.). I have never promised anyone 100% success rate with swaying, in fact quite the opposite.

So let's call 80% the hypothetical best we can do with swaying. This is the most anyone can ever be "set" for a particular gender. Now, imagine that instead of dry old percentages, you have a bowl of M and Ms where 80 of them are blue, and 20 are pink. It is entirely, absolutely possible for a person to randomly take 3 M and M's from the jar and get all pink, even with the absolutely highest success rate we can get.

Let's say that you are a person who is naturally very pink friendly. You start off 80% likely to have a girl, and with lifestyle factors/swaying, you got a 20% boost on those numbers. (And a 20% sway is HUGE! That is not just a small % point, that is a massive amount of difference) Now there are 60 pink and 40 blue candies to choose from. You've had a great sway but still may be somewhat more likely to have a girl. It doesn't mean swaying didn't work - it did work, it just wasn't a magic guarantee. But if luck is on your side you could still get a boy.

And then with swaying you got yourself to 50-50 - you could still absolutely get a girl after swaying for a boy - but you STILL had a good sway. Even with 60% blue, 40% pink, (a person who goes from 80% pink friendly to 60% blue friendly would have triumphant, amazing sway, but swaying just isn't a guarantee) you could still get a girl. It sucks, but it's just the way the luck of it all works. - even with a great sway, there's still a chance. Heck, I know a lady who did Microsort back when it was legal in the US, and she got a boy with 92% X sperm. Just think of taking those M and M's from a cup and you'll see what I mean - it is always possible to grab the "wrong" color.

What we're trying to do with swaying is IMPROVE the odds. Your husband is right, if you just kept having kids forever you would most likely get your desired gender. But most of us don't WANT to keep trying forever. Most of us have room in our families only for one or two more kids, and so we want to go in with the most "right" M and M's in our bowl to pick from. It can easily be that the cards don't fall our way, but still we want to be in with our best chance we can possibly get.

Since 2011, the first year of this site, we have gotten an average success rate of 70% for both pink and blue swayers. The chances that that would happen randomly are astronomical - I have an essay explaining that here: https://atomicsagebrush.com/2019/03/...ndom-thoughts/ So while it's not as reliable as a study, if we really were just "lucking" our way into people getting babies of a certain gender, we should see some years where our results were only 50-50 and we just don't see that. We see about the same success rate year after year.

Have you found out gender yet??

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Hey 👋 we did and it's a boy! I guess luck was on my side this time despite all the girly things going on. Huge surprise for me :)