Interesting result after looking at due dates data

[harleyquinn]

^Agreed. ALso if you look at the studies we are basing some of this stuff off of (ie famine studies) the sex ratio really only changes by a few percentage points (Great Leap Forward famine sex ratio went from 107 boys to something like 105 (?? can't remember)) so even in nature the skew is not that great so what we are doing here is combining a whole bunch of stuff (diet, sperm count, vag environment etc etc!) to get the best odds from what we do know.

If we compared results here with just the general population who don't sway at all who have both boys and girls, there is usually something that they did unknowingly and it wasn't taking Saw Palmetto. YOu can have a bang-up sway with no supplements at all. I think the tiniest little thing can sway your odds and combined with some luck and natural circumstances, you can concieve an opposite of what you have. I think swaying does work but we don't do FDA type trials so there is NO statistical significance to the stats we have here IMO. (double blind trial anyone? I don't think so) and we are not looking at factors ALONE so there is no way to tell what is actually getting the job done. You just do what fits for you.

[atomic sagebrush]

I think the other thing to bare in mind is that sometimes looking at the stats it can be a bit misleading. I swayed with both due date groups mentioned as it took us a while to catch. Personally i think all the girls did themselves proud and this is not mean't in a negative way at all but not all were as strict as others in their sways, sometimes life takes over and you do the best you can. Things like the diet do slacken when your on it for a while and things do slip if your not getting pregnant. This is probably true of any due date group but if you do read some of the threads from the time they would give a little background to some of the difficulties people experienced. Not pointing any fingers as i said everyone did themselves proud but some things are not seen in context when you just look at the stats.

^^^^This. It's not just about the strictness/laxness of anyone's sway tho, because I believe everyone sways their hearts out and some of us just get lucky. But some people had circumstances that were working against them more than some other people did.

It's also that going into all this we simply did not KNOW what would work. We have def. made some false starts and wrong moves and I feel like that one poor due date group really caught the brunt of that thru no fault of their own - going into that batch of sways we simply did not yet have the level of experience and known outcomes to be able to predict what would sway more; when presented with two options that both seem to make intuitive sense, without the real world experience we can't know if these things are actually going to work for people or not.

We know about .0001% of how swaying works and it would have been miraculous if we'd gotten it perfect the first go.

I have been meaning to make a thread about this but maybe I'll just put it here since it seems to fit. Here is a brief overview of what we apparently were getting wrong. refer back to this http://genderdreaming.com/forum/tryi...readsheet.html

1)Length of time on diet - at first I wasn't sure if it was better to hit it hard on diet for a short time or do a more gentle approach for longer. Both seemed equally plausible. But I think the numbers indicate that longer on diet is def. better. And for those in really good condition it may be necessary to do diet for the full 90 days before even starting to TTC.

2)Probiotics and fiber - a lot of people were doing probiotics because they're advised on IG and said to lower pH. I kept them in the mix even tho I did know they were said to aid nutrient absorption, I doubted they were that effective, and we needed to prevent yeast infections because those used to be terrible on IG. I thought the fiber would mitigate any possible benefit from nutrients, but not everyone was doing the fiber with the probiotic (which I did not realize till too late). It turns out that the probiotic really appears to be swaying blue, it was the only thing with less than 50-50 success rate and while I don't believe in magic bullets, I can't come to any other conclusion than that probiotic + LE Diet sways fairly strongly blue, esp if you're not taking fiber.

Along the same lines, not a lot of people took fiber. Some people told me they didn't think it seemed very important which again i did not realize till too late. We got pretty great results with the fiber. I think the fiber is much more important than we realized.

3)exercise - 14 of 14 people doing extreme exercise got girls. We didn't know that and I never would have predicted it would be that effective. In fact I sort of discouraged people from doing exercise because I feared they'd lose too much weight.

4)One attempt - going in, while I ~thought~ that sperm numbers seemed to be swaying, that is just my personal theory and so I didn't give number of attempts as much weight. I also thought the jellies and antihistamine would mitigate the sperm numbers to some extent. So if people were in a hurry to get pg I encouraged them to do more than one attempt to get pg sooner (net result also less time on diet). This was obviously a mistake.

5)Starting off too strict and dropping things too fast - people were doing too strict a diet and stopping ovulation, so they had to end up gianing weight in order to ovulate. and/or when they did not get pg in a timely manner, several people gave up numerous sway tactics all at once and inadvertently swayed blue.

6)Clomid and soy also seem to be yielding good results but I think it's 100% totally possible to have a great sway without either.

Those are the reasons I think we had as many opposites as we did. We know these things now and so going forward into the future we can build on what we know.

I think some good sway tactics got kind of "badmouthed" because we were making those mistakes - it doesn't matter if vitex and SP are great for swaying, if a person is also doing stuff that sways blue it can overall make the V and SP look less effective. You can see this clearly illustrated in reverse with the 67/68% success rate of Old Wives Tales and the chinese gender predicting calendar - we KNOW those things don't sway, they're just piggybacking on the backs of things that do sway. The opposite is also true, if some of our tactics made swaying overall less effective, it can make things that DO work look worse for the wear.

[Serendipity]

Fair enough. Don't get me wrong, I'm swaying like a demon here, as I'm willing to put faith in the system if only for peace of mind that I did everything within my power to bring me the chance of my daughter. That's my main aim- no regrets at the end of my childbearing years, and with only one shot left at this, if I take it, I want to make it the best shot I can possibly give, which is why I'm here. I already feel much more in control of my GD due to having a little hope and a plan of action. I know everyone here is a member for the same reasons and I'm grateful we're able to discuss outcomes freely, which ultimately I hope means that results available will be a true reflection.

Thanks again to everyone involved in compiling stats.

[mummypink]

It is so difficult to know what to do to sway properly as obviously nobody really knows, we can just go back what seems to make a slight difference. It would take one massive study to actually find out for definite if swaying works as there are so many different factors coming into play. Whether it is lifestyle, environment, or just literally the odds after having so many of one gender that eventually you will get an opposite.

I think the main thing to remember is there is no guarantee, and even with swaying you can maybe only increase your odds of a particular gender by a few percentage.

For me when I was ttc this time I didn't quite realise how much I had convinced myself I had a good chance of getting a girl. Everything I read suggested that having 3 children gave you far higher odds of mixed gender, so that coupled with the fact I was doing everything I could sway wise had me pretty convinced I had a high chance of having a girl. I suppose as well because I have no family history of one specific gender I found it incredibly hard to get my head around it when I was told I was expecting our third boy.

I'm not sure if we will try again in the future, my hubby has always wanted 4 children so I am lucky in that respect but I'm not sure I could do this again. And even if I did I'm really not sure where I would start! In my due date group we had a high number of failed sways, and a fair number who got their desired gender weren't particularly swaying. So part of me thinks if we do have another maybe I should leave it to fate to decide. You're kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't though as I know I would kick myself either way if I was to have another and it was a 4th boy.

I'm praying that when I have our new little man in a few weeks that my family will feel complete and my longing for a daughter will magically vanish.

Good luck to everyone ttc though, whatever we think about swaying I'm very grateful to Atomic for putting all the information together so we can make an informed decision. xx

[nuthinbutpink]

Great discussion. The more we go through everything, the more we can try to change. We all have the same goal.

[meeks32]

I really think the swaying statistics spreadsheet is more accurate than a random group of 40 from 2 due date groups, especially as those groups were ones that were 'swaying blind' almost, because atomic and this site was still getting things together and trailing what worked coupled with what the research suggested 'should' work. Now we have more to go on, and in a year or two we will have more again. That spreadsheet is a larger more objective sample and I have found the data to be quite accurate and clear.

I do agree that stats only go so far right now because until we can get to 500 or 1000 sways in there, it's hard to decipher the real stats from the 'piggy back stats' (think ions or Chinese gender cal).

I wholeheartedly believe I had 99.99% chance of conceiving a third boy if I had not found this site, I don't know yet what I'll have as we are still trying, but the sheer number of things I was naturally doing that swayed boy was astounding. I read through the 'how we had our boys' thread VERY sceptically as it was my first contact with this site after the general info. Very quickly my mouth dropped open as I read and saw SO many things I did, ate and chose day to day were boy things. Then, still skeptical, I thought no way must be a coincidence and read through the 'how we made girls by girl mums' thread... Silence. I read. I scrolled. I read more. No, nothing in there sounded normal to me. Not. One. Thing. I would never ever have done or taken the things they did and by this time my head was spinning. I couldn't believe I had my answer.

I have combed the stats and swayed my heart out and you know what? I will probably still have a boy, BUT this time I will know I did everything I could. If I bring my stats down from 99.99% chance of a boy (remember my natural boy lifestyle) to 50/50 that's great. But right now the spreadsheet shows just over 66% success for TTC girl, so that's a HUGE difference from where I believe I would have been. It's also much better than other studies as someone else mentioned, and less than the lying sites that promise miracles, but I'll take my chances with a site run almost completely for free (yes you can access almost everything for free, and what you can't will only cost $12, not $500 like many other sites) run by a mum that has a vested interest and actually put her theories into action herself.

There is definitely further we can go with all this, perhaps incorporating more data on dh, perhaps including more trial and error for us, but I truly think doing something is better than nothing. You can't do the same thing again and again and expect a different result.

Also, I realise this probably sounds very defensive but I would like the true data to be represented for anyone that stumbles on this thread in future. I am also happy to question things and for you to, and I think that helps us nut out our swaying in our own head, and surely helps others too. Just wanted to explain my thoughts on it all as well.

Good luck everyone, remember, luck still plays a role, no matter how much we wish it didn't!!