when sways ATTACK! updated 12-8-17
or, why do people get sway opposites and what can we do about it? (Some of you may recall this was the title of my failed sway with DS 4 as well. Seemed appropriate. :))
Unfortunately, some sways do go bad and end up bringing us a sway opposite. Swaying does work https://genderdreaming.com/forum/swa...-part-1-a.html but not 100% of the time. There are tons of opposites even among the best sways.
If you really truly cannot handle a sway opposite, then you need to investigate high tech or adoption, or postpone TTC until your head and heart are able to handle the possibility.
:nails:The least important reason why sways fail, but the first thing most people think of, is lack of compliance. Some people don't want to or can't do all the various sway tactics. And you know what, that's totally, absolutely, 100% ok. You need to put your own personal sanity, well being, family's needs, and your marriage ahead of a sway at all times. After all, we all know tons of people who never do any of this crazy-a$$ stuff and have kids of both genders and there have been opposites with sways that were perfect and in people who swayed for 2 years before getting pg. It may be the only thing you need to do to get your DG is just get pregnant again.
It's YOUR sway and it's up to you to pick and choose from the sway tactics out there. Never feel like your sway will go south if you don't include every OWT or vaguely science-ish tactic ever heard of. Even if you just do one tiny little thing, it's still a sway, it still sways your odds to some extent, even if it's only 1%. Even if you do nothing, you still have a chance at your DG! NO ONE is ever at fault for any sway opposite; if it's anyone's "fault" it's mine and I hope everyone feels free to blame me whenever anything goes wrong - throw darts at a dartboard with my picture on it, stick pins in a tiny atomic sagebrush-shaped voodoo doll, whatever it takes!
That having been said, you have to own your decisions and be able to live with them. If you want to do a relaxed sway, that's great! If you need to get pregnant quickly and have to drop sway tactics, no worries. If you've had enough already and just want to have a baby in your arms, we've all been there. But if you cheat all the time on diet, you have to be honest with yourself, it's not going to be as effective for you as it would be if you were stricter. If all you choose to include in your sway is a wooden spoon under the bed and tighty whiteys, don't kid yourself that your sway is in any way a sure thing - NO sway is ever a sure thing, even the best of them.
Whatever you include in a sway or drop, keep in mind that you're going to have to live with it - will you wake up for the rest of your life in a cold sweat at 3am wishing you had used Acijel?
:nails: Some sways may fail is because of what DH brings to the table. If your husband won't or can't sway, there's not a lot you can do about it. Or SHOULD. One of my cardinal rules of swaying is, "If Daddy ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Pressuring or bullying your hubby into swaying if he isn't interested, is a recipe for marital disharmony. There have been husbands that have gotten so annoyed with the entire show that not only do they refuse to sway, they pull the plug on the whole baby-making adventure and if you can't get pg, you have NO chance at your DG. Others may pretend to go along with it and then once out of eyesight, simply eat what they want, smoke what they want, and release when they want, which is almost worse than if they just refused to go along with it because at least then, you can have a stricter sway in other ways knowing that DH is not helping.
It's very likely that DH is less important than what you yourself can accomplish alone, and many of us have had successful sways with DH that wouldn't do a thing to assist.
:nails:Some sways may fail because of things that simply cannot be changed. It may very well be that some of us are just more "set" to produce more of one gender than another. We can change some things, but at the end of the day we've had a lifetime of eating certain foods, doing certain things in our lives, and even our DNA may be working against us to some extent. For a more thorough explanation of this principle, please read this: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...-swaying-odds=
and here http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ypothesis.html
:nails: Some sways may fail because of the effect of swaying on our testosterone levels (update - we are no longer convinced that this is truly "testosterone" in and of itself. I'm trying to move away from using "testosterone" but everyone is SO familiar with the concept that most of us still call it that. but I am talking about being a control freak, detail oriented, swaycessed type of person, thinking about swaying all the time for pink, and for blue, just being so certain that you cannot succeed with swaying that you defeat yourself before you even get started) Pink swayers, you want lower T levels and by launching into new and exciting projects that are challenging to you, can increase T levels. Blue swayers, feeling overwhelmed, overstressed, and fearing failure can lower T levels. Please read this essay for more detail: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ly-demand.html
:nails:Another reason why sways fail is BAD INFORMATION. Or NO information. We just don't have enough data at this point to really know or understand how swaying works. We are giving our best guess but we just don't have enough info to go on. Some things seem contradictory and other things we don't have explanations for. Things like blood sugar and hormone levels, not even the smartest researchers on the planet understand how those things even work, let alone interact with the gender ratio. Most of the "data" out there comes from people who have a vested financial interest in presenting a certain explanation of swaying - those who are selling a diet or sway program - and so their studies are pretty suspect to begin with.
And it's probably pretty likely that this state of affairs will continue into the near future anyway - there is very little interest in gender swaying and gender ratio, at least in humans, and you can read more about why that is, here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/scie...s-swayers.html
Update - we do have more info than we once did and I feel pretty good about the things we've learned over the last 5 years!
:nails:THE MAIN REASON WHY SWAYS FAIL...drum roll please...
....bad luck.:fx:
Sorry, I wish it was something more exciting like solar flares or pixie dust, terrorism or alien invasion; alas, no.
Nothing that happens in the human body is ever effective 100% of the time. People smoke their whole lives and never get lung cancer, people eat eggs and bacon every day and live to be 99...yet no one would deny that smoking causes cancer. Even though it doesn't happen every time, overall, if you smoke, you're way more likely to get it than the average person is.
In the case of gender ratio, Mother Nature has a vested interest in making sure that both boys and girls are always being born in some proportion. A species that started having all of one gender just because they ate some salt would have died out a long time ago. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/scie...gic-foods.html
So IF, (and that's a BIG IF) swaying could ever get us to 80%/20% (which is what some of the info on diet seems to indicate) there would still be people having opposites 20% of the time. That's a LOT of opposites. And for those of us with 3,4,5 of the same gender already, if you only swayed on your last child, it doesn't mean swaying doesn't work for you or can't work, it just means that this ONE time, the odds didn't come up your way. You may have done a great sway. You may have gone from 20-80 where you conceived your other kiddos, to 80-20, and then just got unlucky that one time.
Umm, well, then what's the point of even swaying anyway, if it just comes down to luck in the end anyway? Well, if you start off at let's say 75% likely to have Gender A, and only 25% likely to have Gender B, and then by doing a few easy sway tactics, you can get to 55-45, wouldn't you take that, even if you are still more likely to have an opposite?
When I swayed with DS 4 and then DD, I knew I had a better than 50-50 shot at a boy from the get-go. My thinking was, if I could GET to 50-50 from where I was, I'd be thrilled with that and would take the flip of the coin at that point. If you start off with odds of 80-20, you'd have to have 5 kids before getting your DG (on average, and some people would have to go even higher if the dice didn't fall their way). Most people don't want that many kids, so if we can sway those odds to get our DG a little sooner, on kid 2 or 3 or 4, that's great.
Swaying can never, ever, ever be a guarantee, unfortunately. But it can work and it can even work for you after a failed sway.
May the odds be ever in your favor!
:nails: