IG vs. GD swaying? What's the difference? And who is this Atomic Sagebrush, anyway??

...or, "why should I take gender swaying advice from a chick with 4 sons??":think:

UPDATED 12-11-17

I am now the mother of a daughter!! :) Thank you Robert Trivers, Dan Willard, Satoshi Kanazawi, Valerie Grant, Elissa Cameron, Melissa Larson, Fiona Matthews, Sarah Hrdy, with special mention for Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, and EO Wilson, and the many others who have done invaluable research into declining maternal condition and gender ratio.

This story actually doesn't begin with me, it begins with the creation of the InGender site back in 2006. InGender was originally a group of ladies who came together on a message board for support with gender disappointment and it branched out from there. Some of these ladies ended up using the newest technology (PGD and Microsort) to get their desired genders while others scoured studies and articles looking for natural methods (beyond Shettles, who nearly everyone had tried and failed at).

Altho Tamara has become ubiquitous with IG swaying, there were actually dozens of people who worked on the sway in the early days, including a biologist who had access to a lot of awesome studies in the days before studies were widely available online, and a woman who singlehandedly translated the entire French Gender Diet from French into English!! The data that these intrepid gals came up with, gradually over the course of several years, evolved into the IG-style sway. It included timing (either cutoff or O+12 for pink, BD at O for a boy), diet (mostly centered around the FGD but also including some other elements), hormones (raising progesterone for pink, raising testosterone and estrogen for blue), pH (lowering pH for pink, raising it for blue), ions (neg for girls, pos for blue), and supplements (which helped with pH, diet, ions, and hormones.)

The IG philosophy is (altho that has changed a bit lately, with diet being given slightly more importance than it once was) that all these things swayed equally and should be given equal weight, and if you did not want to include one of them, that would ruin your sway. In sways that don't include all 7 sway factors are not even included in the statistics and so when you look at the IG stats, always keep in mind that many, many sways are not included in this data. (including everyone whose husbands wouldn't sway!!)

Most everyone is quite familiar already with the IG-Style sway (and if you are not, the IG FAQ has been posted in the Dream Members section for IG-style swayers to use when the IG site is non-functional) so I won't elaborate any more than that.

Anyway, that brings me, to, well, me. :p I am just a mom like you guys and like the ladies who did the original IG research, no fancy credentials. I had two sons in my early 20's without swaying at all. I had zero gender disappointment with either and really loved being a boy mom and still do. In fact, I particularly wanted a boy with DS 1 and happily got him. I had always wanted a big family of 5 or 6 and just assumed like we all do, that there would be at least one girl in the mix. Unfortunately, life sort of got in the way of that plan and we kept postponing having more kids until we had a bigger house, more money, better timing, but it never happened, and eventually it became glaringly apparent that if we waited any longer for those things to fall into place, there would BE no more children. I went to work for 2 years to get us into a good financial situation to help support having more babies, and by that time, 13 years had passed since I had my last child.

We started TTC with the notion that we may not even be able to conceive (I was 36 years old and it had been a long time since I had been pregnant!) Someone had once told me about Shettles timing, and altho I still did not have a strong gender preference, I did hope that I could have one more child and that it would be a girl because for personal reasons, I did not want to raise a boy as a functional only child, but was ok with having just one girl and it seemed like one more pregnancy, one girl - it would be perfect!! So I sort of vaguely did Shettles timing and happily conceived after only 2 months of trying. EVERYTHING in my life was blue-friendly but I had never heard of "swaying" at that point or anything related to it.

At this point I still did not have a strong gender preference but the pregnancy was very different from my first two and the symptoms/OWT and of course our beloved Chinese Gender Predictor ended up convincing me that my baby was indeed a girl and set me up for HUGE devastation at my ultrasound. I felt like a world-class idiot - I mean, my uterus was like 2 days away from retirement and here I was going through pregnancy and labor again and for WHAT? Another BOY? And I had to have another baby to give a son a sibling?? I felt like the butt of a very large joke and that everyone was laughing at me (and some were, I'm sure, which didn't help!) I was really not in a very good place but somehow I knew I couldn't be alone. I Googled, "I can't believe I am having another boy" and immediately found InGender.

Anyway, long story short, I soldiered on thru my GD with the help of my IG friends, ended up making peace with it before my third son arrived, and things were ok. I did still hope that since I was going to TTC one last time for my son's sake, that this final time I would get lucky and get a girl. And so I decided to look into this "swaying" business. I thought it sounded pretty silly and farfetched at first, basically voodoo wrapped up in science talk, parts of it seemed nonsensical to me, and it did not match with my lifestyle because I have always eaten tons of dairy. But I didn't want to just discount it out of hand either. People really DID seem to be having some measure of success with it beyond 50-50.

I concluded, IF swaying could possibly be true, there HAD to be some reason why - swaying would have to help human survival in some way or else it never would have evolved/been designed into us by God, and I started to do a little research with that truth in mind. Almost immediately I came upon the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis Trivers and the Maternal Dominance Hypothesis https://genderdreaming.com/forum/gen...ypothesis.html. (these two theories are said to be in disagreement but I think they really support each other) The ladies of IG had never heard of the TWH and they all but discounted the MDH but I quickly began to see how all of the traditional sway tactics either a)didn't actually work at all and even might sway in the wrong direction OR b) were really just tapping into these phenomena.

You can read my blog from when I was doing this research here:http://genderdreaming.com/forum/scie...ypothesis.html and a brief explanatory essay about Trivers Willard here http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ypothesis.html

Shortly thereafter I also came across some research done by a biologist which indicated that levels of blood glucose could indicate the gender of offspring that a woman might conceive and the Oxford study was published You are what your mother eats: evidence for maternal preconception diet influencing foetal sex in humans which seemed to TOTALLY support everything I was beginning to realize had to be true about gender swaying - that a lower cal, lower protein, lower fat, lower nutrient diet, with blood sugar levels kept on the low side, possibly with lower sodium intake, and where the mother was in declining condition and even losing weight, swayed pink (Low-Everything), and a High-Everything diet seemed to sway blue.

You can read my thought processes in my blog, but I was taking the earliest steps along the path to what would eventually become the type of sway I recommend. I got very active on the sway board and I was even a forum mod for awhile. IG adopted several of my recommendations on exercise, losing/gaining weight, and skipping/eating breakfast. Despite this, I was getting ready for my sway at this point and I just wasn't ready to turn my back on all the traditional sway tactics. So I included some things like the IG supplements in my sway and the results were, DS 4.

I strongly feel that the main reason why my sway failed was because I was taking too many supplements - but I got scared. I wanted to hedge my bets. I took a month off of swaying to gain some weight back to lose again and I got pg that month of course, so not only was I chock full of supplements but I had gained 3 lbs right before conceiving too. My son is amazing and I have no regrets about that but I do have regrets that I never got to test the TWH the way I really wanted to.

So, after a rocky, high risk pregnancy, my 4th son arrived safe and sound. I quit the swaying forum because it was really driving me insane to give advice to people that I KNEW either didn't sway at all or even swayed in the wrong direction, and to watch people do things that anyone could plainly see was sending their testosterone through the roof chasing after sway "factors" that didn't even work.

Plus, some of the advice on IG was and is just plain DANGEROUS and even though I tried to get it corrected, it was like it fell onto deaf ears. People were getting terribly sick on both the pink and blue sway diets and everyone just seemed miserable all the time. Marriages were falling apart! When sways failed, it was like a pack of vultures descended to pick everything apart and play the blame game. :( And no one seemed to feel that there was any problem at all with any of it.

But by that point, I had been bitten by the science bug. I knew that gender swaying was real and that we had the data we needed in order to have successful sways was finally, for the first time in human history, right there and available to all of us. This is possible!!! I wanted to shout it from the rooftops and stop strangers in the streets to tell them all about it!! I kept doing research on my own simply because I enjoyed it so much and the things I found were so very exciting. I have been doing research for 3+ years now and NOTHING I've ever come across has made me doubt that gender swaying is real, and that Trivers-Willard, Maternal Dominance Hypothesis, and blood glucose levels are at the heart of it.

Then IG began to fall apart and the spinoff sites started, and nuthinbutpink approached me with an offer to join this site and I jumped at it. Little did she know that I had been chomping at the bit for an opportunity to develop a better way to sway, that was physically, emotionally, and maritally more healthy and balanced, and that actually focused on what WORKED rather than old wives' tales and "science" that had literally NO real-world support. (Studies are all well and good, but if something doesn't add up in the real world and most importantly, make sense with the fundamental workings of the human body, then it cannot be true and there must be another explanation for the results). I felt then and still feel even more so, that it is entirely possible to have a sway for a boy or a girl, that is easier to do, is healthier, and yet works better than the IG sway does and that is why I get up every day to come do this, instead of taking up crochet. ;)

So just a brief overview of how my view of swaying is different than the traditional/IG style sway:

1)Timing - I do not believe timing sways in any real way. Please read the two essays below for thorough scientific debunking of cutoff timing and O+12.

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...le-timing.html

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/tryi...9-no-12-a.html

If timing does sway slightly, it's because of certain factors that tend to be true most of the time for a majority of people - as in, people tend to have drier CM at some parts of the cycle than others, or because of frequency patterns or number of attempts. If you are NOT in this majority, or not doing frequency/number of attempts, timing will do NOTHING for you. If you have altered your cycle with diet and supps, your past cycles very well may be meaningless for predicting future timing. And even if you are in this majority, there are much more reliable ways to accomplish the same effects, like using antihistamines to dry up CM and sticking to one attempt for pink, 3 attempts for blue. Plus, timing is very difficult for people to figure out and can keep you from getting pg (esp. O+12 for pink and O Day attempt for blue)

We have found that it is actually having ONE ATTEMPT that sways. Not timing. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...pink-blue.html

2)Sperm count/quality - I believe that for reasons we do not fully understand, lower numbers and lower quality of sperm, sways pink. I also believe that any condition in the female reproductive tract at any point between vagina and egg, that makes it harder for sperm to survive to make it to the egg, also sways pink. My theory of swaying is "the fertility theory" which is just that anything that improves fertility, tends to sway blue, and anything that lowers fertility, tends to sway pink. One attempt has also been shown in our results to sway strongly pink, while regular unprotected sex sways blue and having 3-5 attempts in the fertile window has been very effective for boys. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...pink-blue.html

3)pH - I do not believe that pH sways because X sperm "love" low pH and Y sperm "love" high pH. ALL sperm prefer medium pH which is why both semen and CM naturally have pH in the 7's. Low pH may sway pink because it makes it harder for sperm to survive to make it to the egg (see 2 above). High pH in the vagina may help sway blue by counteracting low vaginal pH and making up for any lack of EWCM in the vagina. I do not believe that anything you stick into your vagina can infiltrate your entire reproductive tract and so I do not believe that repeated douching for days after your attempt, is in any way necessary or a good idea. pH only matters WHEN you DTD and not afterwards and obsessively checking pH only sends testosterone skyrocketing. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ph-pickle.html

4)EWCM -Lots of alkaline EWCM (in the 7's) helps sperm to survive and swim to the egg. Again, nothing to do with one sperm preferring high pH, it's that ALL sperm do best in medium pH and good EWCM, and more, healthier sperm seems to equal more boys. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ph-pickle.html

5)Diet - Diet is BY FAR the most important and effective sway tactic there is. I believe the IGD and FGD sway, not because of minerals but because they tend to be more Low-Everything for pink swayers, High-Everything for blue swayers. They are very far from ideal tho (especially for blue swayers) and I hope that everyone fully investigates their diet options before settling on the IGD or FGD just because they have more results. I didn't even MAKE a diet until well into 2011 so that I don't have as many results as "the other guys" doesn't say anything at all about my diet, other than that it is new.

6)Minerals - I don't think the minerals sway in the ways that IG and FGD claim and since I'm sure most everyone is sick of hearing about me yammer on about that, I'll just post the link to my series of essays on this issue (be sure to read all three, links at the bottom of first essay)http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...-CONTROVERSIAL

7)Ions - Sperm do NOT have different electrical charges and therefore CANNOT be pulled along by any ion in CM or semen. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/scie...m-y-sperm.html Plus, your body MAKES ions out of the foods you eat to do the tasks it needs ions to do, and does not get its ion supply by collect mystical particles that emanate from the moon on a mission to invade your vagina. Everyone's CM contains calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium ions - it's supposed to! PLEASE do not waste precious financial resources on gimmicky devices that are supposed to surround you with ions of the right "type". Does it really make sense to you on a gut level that by wearing a bracelet, you can make yourself conceive a child of a certain gender?? If it's an affordable and pretty bracelet, no harm done, but I have seen too many swayers simply "up the ions" to counteract issues with their diets!! Diets really sway for actual biological reasons, bracelets don't.

8)The moon and seasons - even though I don't believe ions sway either via moon phases or seasons, there MAY be something to the idea that the moon and/or seasons do sway in some other fashion. You can read about that here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...naception.html http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...ns-and-swaying

9)Hormones - I do believe it is possible higher but still normal levels of testosterone sway blue in both DH and DW (so agree with IG on this - but nowhere near as much as I used to) with the warning that artificially elevated levels of testosterone in men (as in, steroid usage) may actually sway pink by harming sperm. I suspect that high levels of estrogen sway pink in DH (again, agree with IG) - still not convinced that estrogen is important for DW either way (because you NEED a decent amount of estrogen to get pg with a girl or a boy) but if it does sway, I am in agreement with IG that higher estrogen in DW prob. sways blue. I am REALLY not convinced that high progesterone = girls (and our experience since I originally wrote this essay have all but proven it, with many women getting girls with low progesterone and short LP). My thinking is that it makes more sense that higher levels of all three sex hormones = boys because everything that helps fertility, seems to sway blue and progesterone is def. required for fertility. Since the jury on this is still out, I think it's best for swayers to concentrate primarily on testosterone and to a lesser extent, estrogen, rather than progesterone. Progesterone will take care of itself - on a blue diet it will go up, on a pink diet it will decline.

Your body does NOT get its hormones by EATING testosterone or progesterone. It manufactures all its own hormones from fat and cholesterol. So the advice given on IG to eat eggs because they contain progesterone, to raise progesterone and sway pink, is not good advice, because your body will simply use the cholesterol in eggs to manufacture testosterone and estrogen if it needs them!! Same with red meat - you do not get your testosterone from eating red meat, your body uses the fat and cholesterol to make testosterone - red meat is good for testosterone either way but just so you know that it's not the testosterone in meat doing anything. You also must use supps carefully to make sure you are not depleting your body of hormones you need for conception.

And you must control the demand side of the equation as well through lifestyle changes...if swaying pink, you want to assure your body that you don't need massive amounts of testosterone to survive, and if swaying blue, you want to encourage your body to make more. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ly-demand.html

10)Blood sugar - I believe lowering blood sugar for pink and keeping it stable for blue is among the most important things you can do for your sway. However, the advice given on IG is inaccurate and not helpful (and this info originally COMES from me so please trust me!) You can eat sugar when TTC pink (don't eat it all day long, tho) OR blue (eat protein and sweets together) and keeping blood sugar low for pink isn't only important in the morning! And for the love of all that is good and holy, if you are swaying for blue, DO NOT EAT a breakfast of Rice Krispies with non-dairy creamer because that is about the worst thing you can do for your blood sugar!!http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...ls-to-TTC-Pink http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...s-for-TTC-Blue

11)Exercise - If you have read "cardio sways pink" and "weights sway blue", well, the reality is vastly more complex than that and doing cardio in moderation MAY SWAY BLUE!http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...a-both-genders

12)Things like moon phases, Jonas Calendar, Chinese Gender Calendar, biorhythms, etc. have NO scientific data to back them up. DO NOT stress yourself out over these things in any way and it is highly concerning to me that anyone should do things like skip a month of TTC or worse yet, go onto BCP (especially blue swayers, because BCP sway pink!) in an attempt to get your ovulation into the right moon phase or biorhythm. I saw several swayers doing this on IG and being encouraged to do so, and it is appalling to me because regardless of swaying, BCP also have side effects and risks that should not be taken lightly.

13)Safety first, last, and always. Please read this essay to see a long list of things that are too dangerous for swaying, some of which people on IG and the IG FAQ, will advise you to do. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...s-swaying.html

14)Never forget, testosterone (or whatever it is that is swaying via personality factors) raises and drops based on cues that is receives from your environment. If your body "thinks" you need more testosterone for survival (because you are undertaking challenges that seriously matter to you - like swaying - or doing things that your body interprets as competitive - again, like swaying) it WILL MAKE testosterone out of anything it can get its greedy little enzymes on - INCLUDING eggs, milk, tahini, and even your own stored body fat. Pink swayers, there is no way for you to utterly deplete your diet/body of the raw materials to make testosterone without seriously harming your health (and you won't be able to conceive then anyway.) You have to cut demand for testosterone at the same time and swaying can all too often feed the beast. DON'T attempt sway tactics that do not work and run the risk of raising T thru the roof, like timing or obsessively checking pH. A "perfect" sway can TOTALLY be a failed sway!!

Blue swayers, if you are getting overwhelmed and discouraged with swaying, if you feel that you can't get it right, that it cannot happen for you, that you do not "deserve" a son, or that other people's sways are always better than yours, this is the kind of mindset proven to lower testosterone regardless of what foods you eat or what supps you take. YOU CAN DO THIS!!

15)If you can't get pregnant, you have NO CHANCE at your desired gender. Many things we do to sway makes it much less likely you'll get pg. It's fine for Tamara to say that she would have gone on swaying hard every month until menopause - she HAS her DG! It is MUCH better to hit it hard on diet and then drop the things that don't even sway to begin with, like timing, then to try and include everything, while reducing your odds of conception so far that it takes a year or more or more to conceive. Blue swayers will gain too much weight and pink swayers will lose too much weight. Our goal is for all our swayers without fertility challenges to get pregnant within 6 months and 3 is even better.

16)ABOVE ALL - swaying must fit into your life and not the other way around. Swaying should not leave you a miserable, physically ill shell of your former self. Your kids and finances should not suffer and your marriage should not be strained because of swaying. People get their desired gender even after SEVERAL of the other, by doing nothing other than they have every other day of their lives - no swaying! Michelle Duggar has conceived 5 girls in a row after having 10 sons (of course interspersed with 4 girls), without swaying. NONE of us is predestined to have all or even mostly one gender. It may very well be that the only thing you need to do to get your desired gender is to get pregnant again.

Wow thanks so much for all the info! Were you KristinDogGirl over there? ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by atomic sagebrush

...or, "why should I take gender swaying advice from a chick with 4 sons??":think:

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Sorry AS, that opening line just made me giggle LOL!!!

Yes, I prob should have included that Annabel! Originally, I was kristindoggirl but that user name was too fraught with emotional baggage and gave away my identity for anyone who knew me, plus SO many people have "girl" in their user name I wanted something that was kinda weird so it was easy to remember.

Great post!

Fabulous post x

So glad I found you atomic... I wouldn't care if you had 10 boys everything you say, and the way you present all the information makes SO much sense.

Thanks for your thoughts! Great summary!

At first I saw the title of the post but didn't know it was you and I was like, o heck no! No one is going to come on this site and say anything bad about atomic! Lol. But this is very informative, thank you!