Will You Find Out Your Baby’s Gender?

Will it be a boy or a girl? Women having babies today have an option their mothers and grandmothers didn’t have, they can find out the gender of the baby before it is born. Throughout human history, mothers had to wait until the baby was born to discover the gender. With testing such as ultrasound and amniocentesis, you can learn the baby’s gender while you are still pregnant.

 

As the date of your ultrasound approaches, you will probably be thinking about the baby and wondering about the gender. You will be asked during the exam if you want to know the gender. Discuss this issue prior to the ultrasound. The time to make the decision is before you are lying on the table or in the middle of the examination. If you haven’t made up your mind, you can have the technician write it down and seal it in an envelope. Later you can look, if you want to find out.

 

Some couples like to find out because they feel a closer bond with the baby when they know the gender. You can call the baby by name or just focus on one gender when choosing baby names. When you know the gender and share this information with your shower guests, you get lots of cute clothes that are appropriate for the baby, rather than lots of yellow and green sleepers.

 

Other couples prefer to be surprised and don’t want to know the gender. If you choose this path, you may annoy your relatives. Your mother and mother in law may be dying to know the gender so they can start shopping. A few couples have a conflict where one partner wants to know the gender and the other doesn’t. The technician may tell the parent who wants to know, but not the other parent. If you choose this route, you will need to try really hard to not let the cat out of the bag.

 

 

The best time to find out the baby’s gender through ultrasound is around eighteen to twenty weeks. This is about the time that most women have an ultrasound. According to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, between sixty and seventy percent of pregnant women have an [tag-tec]ultrasound exam[/tag-tec]. It may be tempting to have an ultrasound just to find out the gender, but this is not recommended by the ACOG. Ultrasound should only be used when medically necessary.

 

An amniocentesis is more accurate at determining the gender of the baby. The test is over 99% accurate for determining gender. However, this test is never done just to find out the gender of the baby. There is a one to two percent risk of miscarriage with amniocenteses. For this reason, it should only be done when absolutely necessary.

 

There are many old wives tales and other fun methods for determining the gender. Although there is no medical evidence that any of these are accurate, they are a lot of fun. Some may be slightly medically based, such as the connection between [tag-ice]fetal heart rate[/tag-ice] and gender. It is said that girls have a higher heart rate than boy babies. The heart rate of girls is supposed to be over 150, while boys are closer to 140. Some women swear by this and some doctors agree. In my experience, it didn’t hold true. My boy had a similar heart rate to his three older sisters.

 

Other Fun Gender Games: