Which gender are we more likely to conceive?

[Princess of Pink]

This is what ~I~ think....I think by putting any pressure/anxiety/ towards a particular gender along with alot of planning and *focusing* on things related to TTC....tips the scales towards blue ESPECIALLY if you are naturally hard wired to have boys to begin with (if there is even such as thing as *hard-wired* to have boys which I have my doubts unless its like something real tangible we can point to, such as current toxoplosmosis (can never spell that) infection)

Looking at your lifestyle...I have 4 sons, and I have NEVER been as healthy as you, in fact...I am quite inspired by your habits. One of these days, I will learn to eat better and use exercise as relaxation instead of torture!! Good luck

You know what I think the biggest problem here is? Ladies research or buy a swaying plan and expect to completely change their lifestyle in 6 weeks - 3 months. Getting all the factors included and changing the way you eat, etc is very stressful at the beginning. Once it becomes normal to you it becomes easy and a lot less stressful. Thats why I started changing my lifestyle 6 months ago, got my plan last month and have started preparing now for my sway in June. By June the boy friendly way of life is going to be happening naturally without me having to put in any effort and I can concentrate on the baby dancing and identifying O. The biggest factor I see on this board is ladies on LE unable to stick to the diet and saying it's impossible to survive on it. Most of us girl mothers have survived our whole lives on it! When you get hungry and struggle eat sweets and junk with no nutritional value...guzzle the diet coke and sit on the couch!!

But for the record I have 5 daughters and have always obsessed about everything!! I border on OCD when I decide to do something and obsess about it constantly.

[babydust]

You already have a great start and I think with a few changes to diet and cutting out the weights you will have a great girl sway without tons of effort put in. I would keep the yoga for sure as it relaxes me too. Can't wait to get back to it after I have my baby! .

[atomic sagebrush]

I did do my research quite a while ago, then felt like it's better to leave everything to chance, now my husband is obsessed with the idea of a daughter, which is warming me up again very quickly as well!

He says it's up to me, but my intuition right now is telling me to do a little bit, but not an all out pink sway. So primarily, he would be upping the tofu and coffee, I'd be trying to limit my tofu, avoid adding salt to anything, try to limit my calories to 1800 per day and avoid snacking between meals, skip breakfast only during the 2WW(I experimented before with skipping it, I definitely tend to binge eat later in the day if I skip breakfast), and avoid potassium rich foods such as bananas and potatoes. Our favorite tea at the moment is mainly liquorice and mint, so maybe try and drink only that. Based on the research we've done, if we do these tweaks, I think our lifestyle is already very pink-friendly anyway. My understanding is that it helps too that I'd be coming off The Pill, and that I'm using Vitex to regulate my cycle anyway, as knowing my cycle then otherwise I'd probably be one of the women who needs months after coming off The Pill before being fertile.

As I said, if we do sway, since this is our first I'd rather it not be an intense sway, especially if it means it takes longer to conceive. I figure just do small things, get excited about either possibility, and if we get a son then take it as a sign and embrace it.

This sounds good to me.

[atomic sagebrush]

Interesting, which parts of my lifestyle would sway blue?

I was thinking earlier today exercise-wise, that I am probably best off between now and when I'm pregnant limiting my strength training to just yoga (which is very essential for me), then going to the gym only for cardio classes/training. It would be very difficult for me to do my yoga practice and 6 hour-long cardio sessions per week, however between the classes at my gym and the fact that like most Dutch people I use my bicycle to go everywhere, that would easily exceed 6 hours of cardio per week.

Your diet is very nutrient dense with lots of variety and colorful fruits and veg, and you seem very detail oriented which can = boys. It's NOT about the things you do and eat per se, it's about your overall condition. The things we do for swaying are means to an end of either being in declining or improving maternal condition - and you're in great condition already. So your diet being somewhat girl friendly, may not really be as relevant as you might think.

My thinking for you is, it can't HURT you to sway pink (unless, as harley points out, you get "swaycessed" to such an extent that it can raise your T levels), and swaying may help. At the least you can double your chances - two tries and if the first doesn't go your way then maybe the second will. A lot of us would have loved to have the opportunity to sway pink with our first child!

[Lydia]

Hi shakti. Like you, my husband and I both plan on only having 2 children and both of us really wanted a girl (one of each would be fantastic as well but that's probably pushing our luck!!).
We decided when TTC #1 that we would do a gentle sway for a girl and if we ended up with a boy, then we'd try a more hardcore approach for #2. We were lucky enough to get a girl first time round. I've put what I did in the TTC a girl add your sway section of the forum if you are interested in seeing what we did.

Good luck with whatever you decide

[Shakti]

I'm back, and we ended up not swaying for this one. Mostly because conceiving our first was scary in the first place, and I wanted to establish whether we were fertile or not. We conceived in one cycle. And we're having a boy.

Really conflicted on how to feel, I wish we had swayed, but I also feel like a bad mother for saying so. I found out a week ago, and still crying. My husband is happy to help me sway for our next child, who is also likely to be our last, and said he's happy to go as high-tech as we can afford to, though in all honesty I doubt we'll ever be able to afford to go high-tech, nor will we be able to afford adoption, which is even more expensive here than high-tech. My husband wants 2 children, and I want 3, if he gets his way then the next one is our last chance to have a girl. Because I'll be almost 34 when we start conceiving our 2nd, I feel like that's more reason to do a sway as hardcore as we can both manage for our 2nd.

We've got 2 years before we're going to start trying for our 2nd, so that does give me plenty of time to do our homework, and to tweak my lifestyle so that it is more girl-friendly. I'm in Holland, and the woman in charge of the Dutch study does run a service complete with blood tests and a personalized plan for around 1500 Euros. That one has an 81% success rate, so if anyone knows of any other methods that have a similar success rate, please let me know.

One more question is if you were in my shoes, had a really good solid sway for your 2nd, and ended up with an opposite, would you still do the same sway for your 3rd? If so, then the odds of having a girl for our 2nd or 3rd would go up to 96%, which is very comforting.

Thanks everyone. And hoping I can relax so I can enjoy our son. This is really hard. :-(

[Shakti]

Old thread as well, so I'll repost this in gender disappointment.

[atomic sagebrush]

Thanks for updating this thread, it's nice when people can read the end to the story too.

I mentioned this in your other thread but there is NO possible way to get 96% success rate, that's not how statistics work. your odds are the same every time.

[Shakti]

Sorry for the confusion, but I did not mean 96% success rate out of 1 pregnancy, but rather if we had 2 more pregnancies. Calculated through 20% rate of opposite squared = 4% chance of opposite for both pregnancies 2 & 3 if we sway for both. I know even Microsort promises 90% success rate, but probably out of our budget, especially because we have to travel for it.

Basically what I'm trying to figure out is if we do sway for pregnancy 2, have a really good solid hardcore plan, and still end up with an opposite, is it worth doing the same plan for pregnancy 3? Especially because I doubt Microsort will ever be in our budget, that, and as I'll be in my late 30s if/when we go for pregnancy 3, low fertility would make that one even more expensive.

Really conflicted and just trying to have a clear plan for the future, that's all.

[atomic sagebrush]

But that is NOT the way statistics work. If you flip a coin 2 times, your odds of heads is 50-50 each time, your odds of 50-50 do not change. The same is true of swaying. Even IF you can get to 80% with diet (I don't entirely believe this to be possible for the population at large; while our stats indicate this number as well, there are too many variables that come into play and not everyone can sway that hard) your chances are STILL 80% with each subsequent sway. At no point ever do your chances go up to 96%.

I just do not want you to base your decisionmaking around a fundamental misunderstanding of what your statistical odds are.