NO+ 12!!!!

[atomic sagebrush]

Updated 12-12-17

So you read about this revolutionary method of gender swaying known as O+12 and you are thinking this MUST be it, the magical pink bullet that is gonna guarantee you a little girl.

Think again.

O+12 doesn’t work biologically, has no scientific support, it doesn’t sway in any reliable way, and it has caused months, even years of BFNs. There are people who wasted years out of their precious and limited fertile windows, who ended up with no baby forever because of O+12.

I have a full explanation of why timing intercourse doesn’t work here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...le-timing.html but for this essay, I want to address O+12 specifically. Because of all the sway tactics that I hate, O+12 is my LEAST favorite!

Why doesn’t O+12 work?

The absolute LACK of reliable scientific evidence supporting O+12.

The entire idea of O+12 is based on a single scientific study published in 1984. It wasn’t testing O+12, it was testing whether Shettles timing worked. 185 couples started the study but only 33 finished it – the others were all eliminated because they broke the rules of the study, didn’t get pregnant, or had miscarriages. Of the 33 couples that finished the study, only !!!!! TWO !!!!! couples reported pregnancy from sex at O+12. Yes, these two couples had girls. But to call 2 girl pregnancies out of 33, a “100% success rate for O+12”, which I have seen O+12 advocates do, is utterly unscientific. A sample size of 33 is not a reliable sample size for telling us anything, and a sample size of 2 is a joke. The study also had some math errors in it that are troubling.

I know, Kynzi (the lady who popularized the O+12 “method”) allegedly got her girl with O+12, but she also had several other things going on in her life at that time that could have easily swayed pink and I go into that all in detail here http://genderdreaming.com/forum/ttc-...ry-o-12-a.html

The plethora of reliable scientific evidence proving that O+12 is going to significantly lower odds of conception to virtually NIL.

I’ve been doing swaying science a long time now and one thing I’ve learned is that crappy and unreliable studies don’t seem to deter people as much as I would like. But, in the case of O+12, not only is the original study flawed, but subsequent studies have clearly shown that O+12 simply cannot work from a biological perspective. Here’s why.

--Eggs don’t LIVE that long after ovulation for most people, most of the time.

The best evidence we have at our disposal indicates quite clearly that eggs live 12-24 hours. Common Fertility Myths - TCOYF And it’s believed that most eggs are more on the 12 hour side than the 24 hour limit. Some probably even live less than 12 hours (and may be fertilizable only a few hours after ovulation), and the older one is, the less time their egg may live and remain able to be fertilized. The reason 24 hours is ever mentioned is that in the case of people who are using Natural Family Planning as a birth control method. To use NFP as birth control, they need to be SURE their egg is dead and gone. The 24 hour idea is the theoretical max that an egg could possibly live under ideal circumstances, NOT the average or typical amount of time an egg lives, and certainly not the amount of time it is capable of being successfully fertilized.

--Sperm take time to capacitate and get to the egg.

While some sperm are superfast swimmers and have been shown to make it to the upper part of the Fallopian tubes within minutes of ejaculation, those sperm are not capable of fertilizing anything because they have not capacitated yet. (Evidence shows that the majority of superfast sperm are dead on arrival and incapable of fertilizing anything anyway.)

At ejaculation, sperm undergo a process called capacitation, where they lose their protective caps and become hyperactive. This process takes several hours. No one is honestly SURE how many hours it takes – it may very well be the case that it varies by individual man, and is almost certainly the case that the woman’s internal environment may control this to some extent. The absolute soonest sperm can capacitate is the 4 hour mark and that is probably being overly optimistic. Please note, only a minority of sperm are ever capacitated at any one time. They capacitate in waves in order to guarantee that some troops will always be ready to go in case Miss Eggo shows up. The others stay uncapacitated, basically asleep, so even if some sperm manage to wake up in 4 hours’ time, there may not be enough to find the egg and get thru the eggshell (it takes more than one sperm to penetrate the jelly on the outside of the egg)

So if your egg only lives and/or is able to be fertilized for only 12 hours, and your husband’s sperm takes 4 hours to capacitate, right there that is a dealbreaker on having sex at O+12. Your egg is already dead. If you have sex 12 hours after you ovulate, you have zero chance of pregnancy. And those people who attempted O+16 or O+20 timing, what a waste that is. Some people were even considering O+48 timing!!! There has NEVER been a pregnancy from sex the day after ovulation, it’s impossible for that to occur. You may as well take a birth control pill.

--The entire female reproductive tract, and sperm itself, is designed to conceive with intercourse PRIOR to ovulation.

If women were meant to conceive with one attempt right at ovulation, or 4,8,12 hours afterwards, the vagina/uterus/Fallopian tubes would be this straight shot to the ovary instead of having tons of little nooks and crannies for sperm to hang out in for days on end. Cervical mucus would continue to be produced for the whole day after ovulation, instead of starting to dry up and become hostile to sperm as the corpus luteum forms and starts cranking out progesterone. Sperm would come out all ready and rarin’ to go without needing to undergo capacitation (there are many other animals who do not have sperm capacitation, indicating that humans have it for a reason).

That sperm can live for up to 5, possibly even 7 days before ovulation, and that waves of them are always capacitating while others stay dormant; coupled with the fact that our female bodies make EWCM for 5, possibly even 7 days before ovulation and then rapidly dry up and begins to produce mucus that blocks the passage of sperm, almost as soon as ovulation occurs, and contain all those little nooks and crannies for the sperm to hang out in, demonstrates very clearly that it is intercourse BEFORE ovulation that has created most of the babies ever conceived on the face of the planet.

Above all else, that’s why O+12 cannot work. IF it was the only way, or even a GOOD way, to get a girl, the human body would have an entirely different design. With the way we are made, there is no earthly way that all the 3.5 billion women on the face of the globe, or ANY significant percentage of them, were conceived with one shot 12 hours after ovulation.

If gender swaying works, it’s for a reason and not some random accident of creation. It’s because something in one’s environment favors odds of survival to reproduction for little boys or for little girls. It makes no sense that having sex on Thursday instead of Wednesday would make you have a girl instead of a boy, because you have the same diet and environment and body on Thursday that you did on Wednesday and it’s those things that confer benefits onto one gender of offspring versus the other.

Significant evidence that shows clearly that it is impossible to pinpoint ovulation to the day, let alone to the hour using anything other than ultrasound.

It’s just NOT POSSIBLE to use changes in your cervix, cervical mucus, O Pain, or even temping and charting, to pinpoint the day you ovulate. Really! Numerous studies have been done using modern technology, and it has been shown overwhelmingly that even highly trained women could not pinpoint their DAY of ovulation using low-tech methods. It cannot be done. Various studies have shown 25-30% to a max of 50% (and most studies were in the 25-30% range, not 50) effectiveness for using temping/charting and/or cervical position/mucus. And that was the day of ovulation, where most of us have a pretty good idea when it’s gonna happen! Given those results, the idea that anyone can tell anything down to the hour based on symptoms up to and including body temperature, is absolute nonsense.

Additionally, as many have learned to their very great dismay, previous cycles are useless for predicting future cycles, particularly where swaying is concerned. It doesn’t matter what happened last month, three months ago, or whatever. On some sites there were people who tracked their ovulation for 6 months before they ever started to TTC. It was just a big useless waste of time and those months are so precious, they shouldn’t be squandered on things that don’t even sway.

The month I conceived my daughter, I had EWCM for 2 days after I ovulated (my ovulation date was confirmed by ultrasound). If I had waited around that month till my CM turned creamy, I would have no daughter today - I really wouldn’t, that was the last month I was going to try. And when I got my 4th son I had no CM at all and I didn’t even know I ovulated despite checking my cervix and pH 2-3 times a day. Even the experts can’t get it right.

The absolute lack of evidence supporting pH and strong evidence that low pH inhibits conception significantly.

Some people want to do O+12 not because they think there is any magic of a particular day, but because it’s supposedly easier to keep pH low for a short period of time than it is for a longer period of time. On some websites, the claim is made that you need to keep your vaginal pH very low from the time of attempt till the egg is dead, and since the egg will be dead sooner with O+12 than with any other timing of intercourse, that would mean O+12 would be easier from a pH-managing perspective.

I have a full debunking of pH here http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ph-pickle.html

For O+12, pH is actually another nail in the coffin that demonstrates that it simply cannot work and anyone who does it correctly, is PREVENTING pregnancy. According to an article written in 2008 by a professor of Urology at Northwestern University and a professor of Urology at Baylor University who is also the Chief of Male Reproductive Medicine and Surgery, Volume 5, Chapter 45. Sperm Transport and Capacitation a reduction in sperm motility is seen at a pH of less than 6. This means sperm moves slower (or not at all) at any pH less than 6. So doing a lime douche or using splime lowered to pH of 4 or 4.5, waiting till 12 hours after ovulation, and then expecting that sperm are going to go dashing off to fertilize the egg is simply unsupported by any facts. That low pH is going to slow them down significantly and that’s BOTH X and Y sperm, not just Y sperm. X sperm do not love low pH. NO sperm love low pH.

People who claim they got girls with O+12 are simply mistaken.

The science does not support that O+12 can possibly work. But there are tons of people who swear that they did get a girl using O+12. Are these people just super big liars or what?? Let’s take a look at the various categories of O+12 boosters (please note, these are not mutually exclusive, there is plenty of crossover) Keep in mind, these are the people who fill out sway questionnaires and tell you, me, and everyone else that they conceived on O+12. These people are the ONLY reason why O+12 appears successful, because biologically, it's impossible.

--O+12 “experts” not so much

Back when I was on the InGender site, I was often amused by the cojones of certain people who would amass several dozen posts where they were frantically trying to figure out O+12, then once they'd get BFP (more often than not after botching an O+12 attempt and posting another several dozen attempts frantically despairing over it) the exact same people would turn around and suddenly become the biggest O+12 experts around.

They just kinda forgot how they didn’t know what they were even talking about just the month before, forgot the tearful 2 am posts where they despaired over ever getting it right, and were doling out advice like these sage old gurus. According to their OWN posts, they had no clue when they ovulated and had admitted in writing that they were confused and frustrated, but then everyone who came afterwards then assumed that they knew what they were talking about and took them at their word that they had indeed successfully done O+12.

--People who “just knew” they conceived at O+12 because they are magic

Some how, some way, these people just KNEW they conceived at O+12 (or in some cases, O+16, 24, and in one case, O+48). Many of them weren’t even tracking ovulation, they were apparently informed by the angels when conception occurred. Others were going off symptoms, but it’s been definitively proven to my satisfaction by science and my own experiences on the forums , that it’s impossible to even get the day of ovulation right, let alone down to the hour – even for people with a high level of expertise. These people are just simply wrong about when they conceived. There has NEVER been a confirmed pregnancy from sex the day after ovulation has taken place.

--People who did a cutoff plus an O+12

These people either got pregnant from the cutoff attempt and not the O+12, or miscalculated ovulation so bad that who even knows when they conceived. Often, they “just knew” that it was the O+12 attempt that got them pregnant, even though most of the time they switched from a straight O+12 to cutoff plus O+12 because they weren’t getting pregnant from O+12 alone. You can’t tell when you conceived on the basis of feelings or intuition. If there were sperm waiting when the egg emerges, that sperm will have fertilized the egg long before the splime for the O+12 batch was ever mixed.

--People who legitimately miscalculated ovulation but still did one attempt

A lot of people genuinely believe that they did a great O+12 attempt. But the studies have shown definitively that even with a high level of training and expertise, it’s just not possible to pinpoint ovulation to the day, let alone to the HOUR!! Most of the mistakes that were made on pinpointing ovulation in the studies, were people who thought they had attempted on O day (O+12 qualifies as O day), when really they had attempted the day before O day - the O-1/day of pos OPK that we on Gender Dreaming recommend for best odds of conception.

In the stats that we’ve kept on this site, we have found that one attempt, regardless of timing or frequency pattern, has gotten about 75%. O+12, which when done properly is done with just one attempt, has also gotten 75%. Since people are getting identical results with one attempt on different days of the cycle, the O+12 simply cannot be what is swaying. It must be the one attempt. If you had what you believe was a successful O+12 and you’re going back for a sissy for DD but have not been able to conceive with O+12 timing a second time, PLEASE consider dropping the O+12 and keeping the one attempt.

--People who released two eggs and hit only the second one

Women can release more than one egg separated by a few hours, even as many as 24 hours (this is not really a real-world number; for the vast majority of people it will be much sooner than that. Again, the 24 hour number is meant for people using NFP as birth control…it’s a theoretical max for those who are trying to prevent pregnancy, and not what the typical person would experience.)

But, if the stars all did manage to be in alignment and the elusive O+12 were to be achieved, it could be that a person could fail to hit the first egg released, but still manage to hit a second egg that had been ovulated several hours later. Hyperovulation is believed to occur between 5-10% of all cycles, and some of the supps that people take for swaying and TTC may up these odds. I wouldn’t count on hyperovulation for achieving a successful pregnancy with O+12, though.

--And some people actually are just liars, but it isn’t really their fault

I know this sounds a bit farfetched, but it’s the only logical conclusion I have been able to draw. Some people have lied in order to make their sways look better. Certain sites that will remain unnamed, can be ruthless when it comes to criticizing and picking apart sways and so some people have fudged what they wrote in their sways in order to avoid criticism.

The reason I believe this is because people on the Gender Dreaming site are having difficulty getting pregnant with relatively light sways and having to drop a LOT of stuff in order to get pregnant. It just strains my belief to the breaking point when I recall the kitchen sink sways that were done on IG – there is just NO WAY, when we GDers can’t get reliably pg with a little RepHresh 24 hours before one attempt at pos OPK, that people are getting pregnant with splime with pH of 4.5, monthlong abstains, and O+12. I’m not buying it, it just doesn’t make sense to me. Something is hinky.

The most insidious reason why O+12 doesn’t work is because people are not getting pregnant on it in any kind of timely manner (at least those who are telling the truth )

When I started off swaying for my 4th child, I was with a group of fellow older moms on IG. Several of them were trying for O+12 and getting BFN after BFN. In the meantime, I didn’t do O+12 and just TTC to get pregnant, which I did in very short order. I’m sure some people thought I was an idiot for leaving out what “everyone” agreed was the best sway tactic around and even more so when I had my 4th boy, but because I did that I had time to try again and ended up getting a girl in the end.

It breaks my heart because some of those wonderful ladies went on to have terrible struggles with infertility, several still do not have babies to this very day, and I think back on all those wasted months on O+12 and it infuriates me.

If you cannot get pregnant, you have NO chance of a girl.

The stats on O+12 DO NOT SHOW the HUGE number of people who tried it and failed to achieve pregnancy. Percentages of success can be highly misleading things, because if a sway tactic drastically reduces odds of conception, even if something seems to have a high percentage of success, then more people may get their desired gender without it anyway.

It’s my job to get the MOST people their desired gender, NOT the highest percent success rate. If only 10 people out of 100 are able to get successfully pregnant doing O+12, and while our stats indicate O+12 is a 75% success rate, heck, I’ll even spot ‘em 5% and call it 80% - that's 8 of 10 girls. In the meantime 90% of those original people have not gotten pregnant, and possibly ended up having to drop other sway tactics and relaxing on diet anyway (possibly raising their odds of blue).

If 100 of 100 people are able to get successfully pregnant without O + 12 but keeping one attempt, and as our stats indicate, 70-75% had girls, that's 7-7.5 out of 10 girls, very close, and it's a HECK of a lot more girls overall than the first group had.

Even if you could get girls 9 out of 10 times with O+12 and only 60% get girls without O+12, 90% of 10 people is 9 people and 60% of 100 people is 60. That means 51 more people will get daughters without O+12 than with it.

Those numbers are totally hypothetical by the way, I don't even think O+12 does anything. I'm just making them up to illustrate the larger point that if you cannot get pg with a sway tactic, then swaying is WORTHLESS, it doesn’t matter if it’s the greatest % success rate ever if only .001% of people can get pregnant while doing it.

Testosterone craziness.

UPDATE - I'm not even convinced it is "testosterone" that is swaying. I am using "testosterone" to refer to whatever that control-freaky personality thing is, that the boy moms nearly all have and that swaying really aggravates. It is a swaywrecker!!

The final reason why O+12 doesn’t work is because all the testing and tracking and monitoring and poking your cervix every 10 minutes trying to decide if it feels like a nose or an ear is gonna send your T levels/control-freakishness thru the roof and very likely will undo any possible good that it could do to begin with.

Don’t believe it?? Read this. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ypothesis.html

IF you absolutely MUST do O+12, I have an easier way to do it. Take OPK and then have one attempt 48 hours after your first positive. Expect to get a lot of BFN doing this, but eventually you’ll probably get lucky and will get pregnant. I would go real light on other sway tactics while doing this, esp. anything that could possibly dry up the fluids in your reproductive tract faster (such as antihistamine, Sudafed, or cranberry).


Just say NO!!! NO + 12!!!

[aidansmum]

Love it! Thanks for this. I am 100% with you. It is just a way to get frustrated and miserable after 100 bfn's! I believe 1 attempt at + OPK is the way to go for pink sway.

[sbowman]

I love the title!! I think this every time I see a website talking about O+12 or the FGD. I'm just like, no no no!!! You're wrong! One of my friends swears she got preg with her girl using O+12. Drives me nuts.


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[HopefulMonster]

Great essay, I think O+12 is ridiculous, but the one thing I disagree with however is that it's not possible to know the day you ovulate. Yes it's insane to think you could know the hour you ovulate, but you can know the day.

I've done NFP with bbt charting and opks for over 7 years and I always get a fade in positive with my opks and a clear temp drop the day of ovulation followed by a clear temp rise the day after, making my o day very obvious. I'm not saying it would be obvious for all women, but it most certainly is possible.

[Dollydot]

Your right, people don't waste your time on 0+12 like me who has wasted 7 months on this, its impossible to get pregnant...

[Dreamofpink]

Your right, people don't waste your time on 0+12 like me who has wasted 7 months on this, its impossible to get pregnant...

Oh Dollydot huge hugs to you! I too wasted far too much time on timing - a year trying to get a good cut-off. I then found this fab forum, spent far too long trying to do the perfect sway & am now expecting ds3! I've learned A LOT thanks to your research Atomic, I'm so so thankful to you & your tireless efforts.

LISTEN TO ATOMIC LADIES - TIMING IS A LOAD OF RUBBISH!!

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[atomic sagebrush]

Great essay, I think O+12 is ridiculous, but the one thing I disagree with however is that it's not possible to know the day you ovulate. Yes it's insane to think you could know the hour you ovulate, but you can know the day.

I've done NFP with bbt charting and opks for over 7 years and I always get a fade in positive with my opks and a clear temp drop the day of ovulation followed by a clear temp rise the day after, making my o day very obvious. I'm not saying it would be obvious for all women, but it most certainly is possible.

That's what I would have said a few weeks ago too Hopeful, but there were studies done and even women who were well trained, both in temping and in Billings, only got the day right between 25-50% of the time. People using both temping and CM were right about half the time. They were able to get pg using NFP and also able to reliably prevent pregnancy as well and NFP is highly useful for those things, but when it came to predicting the actual day itself it was not much better than guessing. Now, it may very well be not that people are guessing and only 1/4-1/2 are guessing it right, but more that 25-50% of those ladies have "classic" charts and you are in that group. This fits in with what I've seen repeatedly on the boards where many people's charts just aren't making sense and they don't have a clear dip and rise.

The thing I want people to take away is not that temping is useless and no one should do it, but that the idea that you can tell on the basis of temping and charting and CM and cervix changes down to the hour of ovulation just can't work.

[atomic sagebrush]

I love the title!! I think this every time I see a website talking about O+12 or the FGD. I'm just like, no no no!!! You're wrong! One of my friends swears she got preg with her girl using O+12. Drives me nuts.


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Oh, I'm glad you mentioned this, I felt kinda dumb posting it because I was thinking maybe most people had gotten the message and I know there are tons of other things that I prob. should be writing about, but I keep getting PM's about it and I'm trying to cover the things I get the most q's about, because I just can't keep answering so many questions LOL

[coralsky]

Oh, I'm glad you mentioned this, I felt kinda dumb posting it because I was thinking maybe most people had gotten the message and I know there are tons of other things that I prob. should be writing about, but I keep getting PM's about it and I'm trying to cover the things I get the most q's about, because I just can't keep answering so many questions LOL

Aw Atomic, you must find it so tedious getting asked the same questions again & again...but FWIW I think the essays really help, and as soon as I see a new one pop up I always make a point to read it ASAP.

Oh and if it makes you feel any better, an old boss once told me that getting a zillion questions a day from people is a symptom of being wonderful LOL... most definitely true in your case x

[atomic sagebrush]

I honestly don't mind answering q's for people, it's just that it takes so darn much time and I have too much on my plate so have to find a way to make it a little easier on myself. If I can eliminate some of the more common q's I hope that I'll have more time to do other things both in my personal life and for the site.