Frequency question .... what about 5, 6 abstinence? Atomic????

Okay this question has been playing on my mind since I found out i'm pregnant.
So I am 22 weeks pregnant with a girl. confirmed at 16, 18 and 21 weeks.

But one of the main reasons I found it so hard to believe I would be having a girl was due to the frequency we DTD. We were TTCing a girl but stuffed up the frequency part.

you see, My whole aim was to do 7 days abstinence with a 2 day cut off. My DH is 43 and I didnt want to do really long abstinence and he wouldnt manage frequent release due to work schedules etc... I normally ovulate on CD16 or 17 so we DTD on CD 7. then he abstained for 5 days and I began to panick that ovulation was coming earlier that month. So in a panic we DTD only after 5 days abstinence on CD12, and then DTD again on CD13. both nights at 10pm. I panicked and inserted a large amount of replens up my vag the next morning I got my +OPK and I ended up ovulating 42 hours later ( felt pains)

So according to all the research this would have swayed boy right?
I was on the Girl diet 100% and I did take sudafed prior to my attempts. But can someone please explain how I ended up with a girl if frequency should have swayed boy... would there have been 50/50 girl boy sperm with this BD combination and I got lucky? What do you think swayed pink? Can diet alone just sway the odds so greatly???

even if it sways boy (which it likely does), you could (and did!) still get an opposite!

the replens might have lowered sperm count enough for you, though

diet is definitely the most important factor so if you were doing that well perhaps that had more of an influence than your DH's sperm count.

some who have studied the diet say they have 80% success from that alone. I think that might be slightly high, TBH. Probably more like 60-70%. A study I saw about low sperm count and sex ratio found that the lower sperm count DID seem to increase the chance of a girl, but only by 5% or something like that... we still try it because all of these 5%s add up in the end, but no one factor is a guarantee.

You were doing other things as well as abstinence to try and lower sperm count so I don't think you can look at it in isolation - your DH's age, Replens and cut-off all likely contributed to a lower sperm count and you got lucky!

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Originally Posted by BABYPINK3

Can diet alone just sway the odds so greatly???

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I would have thought that YES this was the main factor. Because even with both x&y sperms starting from the same place in the crypts, your body was primed for pink, so it gave them the extra leg up. This is why I hoped that my blue primed body would have given my blues the leg up from the closer starting position, which it did! if that makes sense lol.

I have thought the same thing. We dtd every other day until the day before O so I thought for sure I would get a boy. But I was doing the diet and other things to sway and I am having a girl also. So I do think diet plays a big role.

First of all, what swaying means is simply that you are SWAYING the odds of conceiving a certain gender. If any of this was a guarantee, we would call it "guaranteeing". People can and do conceive girls every day of the year doing absolutely NONE of these things and if we all wanted to "duggar it out" we would all eventually conceive an opposite without swaying at all whatsoever.

Diet is far and away the number one factor that sways. Sudafed helps a LOT more than any frequency pattern (altho I don't like Sudafed and think eveyrone should do antihistamines instead.) Plus you used Replens.

ONE thing cannot overcome all the other things to sway. Plus, at 43, 5 days of abstinence may have totally been equivalent to a 22 year old man abstaining for 14 days anyway. I think you should thank God that you did not abstain any longer with a 43 year old DH because you would have reduced your odds of pg by a lot and also upped your odds of birth defects.

There is ALWAYS 50-50 X and Y sperm. Always. No changing it. The frequency patters are to lower sperm count/quality overall is to control the numbers and quality of the sperm and also the amount of the semen, not to alter the proportions of X and Y sperm because that is impossible.

if you had told me you did diet, Replens, Sudafed, and a 43 year old man abstained for 5 days i would have told you that was a fantastic sway.

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Originally Posted by atomic sagebrush

First of all, what swaying means is simply that you are SWAYING the odds of conceiving a certain gender. If any of this was a guarantee, we would call it "guaranteeing". People can and do conceive girls every day of the year doing absolutely NONE of these things and if we all wanted to "duggar it out" we would all eventually conceive an opposite without swaying at all whatsoever.

Diet is far and away the number one factor that sways. Sudafed helps a LOT more than any frequency pattern (altho I don't like Sudafed and think eveyrone should do antihistamines instead.) Plus you used Replens.

ONE thing cannot overcome all the other things to sway. Plus, at 43, 5 days of abstinence may have totally been equivalent to a 22 year old man abstaining for 14 days anyway. I think you should thank God that you did not abstain any longer with a 43 year old DH because you would have reduced your odds of pg by a lot and also upped your odds of birth defects.

There is ALWAYS 50-50 X and Y sperm. Always. No changing it. The frequency patters are to lower sperm count/quality overall is to control the numbers and quality of the sperm and also the amount of the semen, not to alter the proportions of X and Y sperm because that is impossible.

if you had told me you did diet, Replens, Sudafed, and a 43 year old man abstained for 5 days i would have told you that was a fantastic sway.

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Thank you Atomic!!! you have certainly put my mind at ease. and you a so full of knowledge! I've been beating myself about this for ages. I feel like if I had of gotten a boy this would have been why. The thing is I have a DD, and a DS already and I know for a fact that we didnt dtd every day nor abstain 7+ days with her, infact the frequency was more like every 3-4 days. we werent swaying but my diet was very girly.
I know this wouldnt always work for everyone but it certainly shows the importance of the diet alone.
So just another question, if someone abstains 5days then DTD 2 days a row, I mean I assume the sperm from the 2nd night BD would have been the one that got my pregnant. would this have been from high sperm count or leftover batch from the abstinence... if you know what I mean? Would it have time to replenish after 24 hours?

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Originally Posted by BABYPINK3

Thank you Atomic!!! you have certainly put my mind at ease. and you a so full of knowledge! I've been beating myself about this for ages. I feel like if I had of gotten a boy this would have been why. The thing is I have a DD, and a DS already and I know for a fact that we didnt dtd every day nor abstain 7+ days with her, infact the frequency was more like every 3-4 days. we werent swaying but my diet was very girly.
I know this wouldnt always work for everyone but it certainly shows the importance of the diet alone.
So just another question, if someone abstains 5days then DTD 2 days a row, I mean I assume the sperm from the 2nd night BD would have been the one that got my pregnant. would this have been from high sperm count or leftover batch from the abstinence... if you know what I mean? Would it have time to replenish after 24 hours?

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I'm curious about this too. If dtd the second day would be bad b/c of replenished sperm? If I don't get a bfp I am wondering if we should do abstain next month...

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Originally Posted by BABYPINK3

Thank you Atomic!!! you have certainly put my mind at ease. and you a so full of knowledge! I've been beating myself about this for ages. I feel like if I had of gotten a boy this would have been why. The thing is I have a DD, and a DS already and I know for a fact that we didnt dtd every day nor abstain 7+ days with her, infact the frequency was more like every 3-4 days. we werent swaying but my diet was very girly.
I know this wouldnt always work for everyone but it certainly shows the importance of the diet alone.
So just another question, if someone abstains 5days then DTD 2 days a row, I mean I assume the sperm from the 2nd night BD would have been the one that got my pregnant. would this have been from high sperm count or leftover batch from the abstinence... if you know what I mean? Would it have time to replenish after 24 hours?

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Honest answer is it depends - it depends on when you OV in relation to that. If your first attempt was the day before OV day and the second attempt the following day was on OV day the ones from the first day would have the better chance because they would already be there and be ready to capacitate to catch the egg whereas the others might still be arriving on the scene.
if OV was later than that then the chances are that the ones from the second day would have a SLIGHT better chance because a few of the first lot would have already capacitated too early (in anticipation of hte egg arriving at any moment) and died so they would be less in numbers.

I don't believe that (with subsequent BDs) the newer sperm get to queue-jump in front of the previous lot, I think they all mix together once they're up in the tubes so any that are in there have a fair chance.

I plan on a 7 day abstinence this time, not longer. My dh is 37, that is just 2 years older than when we ttced out dd, but I notice now that when we dtd often, his PH drops very very low..... We conceived our son dtd a lot! Way more than what you did, HOneyrose. With dd, we only dtd twice in the whole cycle! (miy first son is from a preivous relationship).
Like someone else here said, at the end of the day, this is a minor fact. I think abstinence is generally a good addition to a girl sway.

sorry, Honeyrose, you are Babypink3 on here, LOL --- Hope you know I meant you...

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Originally Posted by BABYPINK3

Thank you Atomic!!! you have certainly put my mind at ease. and you a so full of knowledge! I've been beating myself about this for ages. I feel like if I had of gotten a boy this would have been why. The thing is I have a DD, and a DS already and I know for a fact that we didnt dtd every day nor abstain 7+ days with her, infact the frequency was more like every 3-4 days. we werent swaying but my diet was very girly.
I know this wouldnt always work for everyone but it certainly shows the importance of the diet alone.
So just another question, if someone abstains 5days then DTD 2 days a row, I mean I assume the sperm from the 2nd night BD would have been the one that got my pregnant. would this have been from high sperm count or leftover batch from the abstinence... if you know what I mean? Would it have time to replenish after 24 hours?

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No, you cannot make that assumption at all. In fact, depending on the timing of how it all goes down and when the egg shows up, only the first batch of sperm may even have TIME to capacitate. An uncapacitated sperm (and they take at minimum 4 hours for the earliest ones to capacitate) cannot fertilize an egg. So if you had had sperm in your VJ in advance of the egg, and then DTD after that, and sometime in there the egg showed up, the earlier sperm would already be ready to go (and prob. would have already fertilized the egg) before the second batch of sperm was even ready to go.

This is even true if you did not ovulate, because not all sperm capacitate right away. They have some primitive form of communication and they can coordinate when they capacitate, so some sperm from either batch will always be waiting uncapacitated and basically dormant, others will be capacitated and looking for an egg, and others will have capacitated and died (they don't live that long after capacitation.) This is an ongoing process so the sperm from the second batch will simply get with the program of whatever the first batch were doing. Sperm from either batch has just as good a shot at the egg (given that the environment was equally sperm friendly, of course!) as long as one wasn't like 7 days earlier or something.

As an illustration of how this works, you may have seen or read about a woman who had intercourse with two diff. guys and ended up with twins of different races - that HAD to be sperm from two diff. batches and odds are that they were separated by hours or more likely days - yet they both had equal shot at the eggs!!

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Originally Posted by amari

I'm curious about this too. If dtd the second day would be bad b/c of replenished sperm? If I don't get a bfp I am wondering if we should do abstain next month...

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Amari, when you are on Clomid, you should not do abstain.

DTD the second day is not bad because of "replenished sperm" not only because of what I spelled out above (the sperm don't all capaciate at the same time anyway so at any given moment, only a few are even capable of fertilizing the egg) but also because when you're on Clomid and/or swaying, your internal environment is so sperm-hostile that most of the sperm may die prematurely anyway. So you have less sperm even if you BD 10 times as much.