While most practitioners think of high tech ways to select a baby girl or boy, most parents would include the high tech ways to choose one sex over another, like MicroSort® or preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) as well as low tech methods that may not have any science behind it at all.
For many sex selection is not a clinical process at all. They rely more on myths or old wives tales to help they try to conceive the baby of their dreams. There are many methods of trying to alter the gender of baby before conception and they fall into a couple of broader categories:
- Ovulation Timing
Ovulation timing is about when a baby is conceive relative to when you ovulate. Some of the old wives tales or ideas are very specific, down to hours. The most popular ovulation timing method of conceiving the baby of a specific sex would be the Shettles Method. For a boy, have sex very close to ovulation, for a girl, try to have sex 2-3 days prior to ovulation, according to Shettles. This program has also had various adds ons, including some nutritional components and a look at the pH of the vagina.There is a girl specific method called O+12. (Pronounced oh plus twelve.) This method says that you should have sex twelves hours after ovulation to conceive a girl.
- Nutrition
For a baby boy, you should eat a diet that is high in salt, meat and drink carbonated beverages according to folk lore. For a baby girl a mother's diet should consist of vegetables and sweets. - How to Conceive
There are also some lore that talks about how to conceive a baby based on who is where, when. This can be anything from: for a boy, think man on top, to girls are born with a woman on top. This also plays into mom's orgasm, for a girl, no orgasm, for a boy, orgasm.
