Naturally determining the sex of your babies – Francis Ewherido
Let me commence with a solemn declaration. I believe, without any doubt, that all humankind is created equal and in the image and likeness of God. No person is superior to the other by virtue of family background, race, ethnicity or gender.
So today’s article has nothing to do with the superiority of the male child over the female child. There is no such thing, or maybe it exists in the imagination of some people due to prehistoric and archaic prejudices. We need both sexes to perpetuate humanity, so both are equally important.
Put these male chauvinists making noise about the supremacy of the male child in an island without women for one year and they will run mad. I am only writing today’s article because God has given us the freedom of choice and if anybody has challenges exercising that freedom positively and you are in a position to help, please do just that.
Last week’s article, “Nigeria’s exponential Population” did generate much reaction on my social media pages. But one of the reasons given by a respondent for the exploding population did catch my attention. He said some couples give birth to more children than they originally planned or can cater for because they are looking for the “almighty” male child. This does not make sense to me, but a man has the right to make legal choices that make him happy. I have written considerably on this subject and will not duel on it wholesome today, but I will concentrate on naturally determining the sex of your baby.
Naturally preselecting the sex of your baby is no rocket science; it is the simple biology we all learnt in secondary school. Maybe, we just take it a little further. So it is painful to see couples unfulfilled, sad or breed like rabbits because they are looking for either a son or daughter, son most of the time. Today, I am giving an abridged version of steps (previously addressed in my column) that you need to take to naturally preselect the sex of your baby with stunning accuracy.
First, we must remember or know that the male sperms carry either X or Y chromosomes, while the female eggs carry only the X chromosomes. The egg carrying the X chromosome and the sperm carrying Y chromosome produce a male child, while the egg carrying the X chromosome and the sperm carrying X chromosome produce a female child. So a man determines the sex of a baby. You can now see that many husbands are just blaming their wives for results that they are wholly responsible for.
The sperm carrying the Y chromosome swims faster, but has a shorter lifespan while the sperm carrying the X chromosome is slower, but has a longer lifespan. If you want a male child, intercourse should take place just before or during ovulation. The faster sperms carrying the Y chromosome would get to the egg and fertilise it before the sperms with X chromosome make their slow and steady journey there. And only one sperm can fertilise an egg. If, however, intercourse takes three days (sometimes two days) or more before ovulation, the result will likely be a girl. This is because all the faster sperms carrying the Y chromosomes with short lifespan would have died leaving the egg for the slower sperms carrying the X chromosomes with longer lifespan to fertilise.
The critical elements here are ovulation, which occurs when an egg or ovum is released from the ovary and usually lasts for about 12 to 24 hours, and timing of intercourse. Ovulation normally occurs between the 12th to 14th day of a woman’s 28-day cycle, but like most human phenomena, there are no absolute certainties and it varies from one woman to another. Even within the same woman, there are variations. Many women find this unpredictability challenging. Such women can engage in charting, that is daily recording of changes in the mucus discharge from the vagina that is related to ovulation, to enhance predictability.
Please note that how long the sperm lives in the body of your wife after intercourse is determined by a number of factors. One, the vaginal environment is very important. If it is alkaline, the sperm carrying the Y chromosome can survive up to three day, while the sperm carrying the X chromosome can survive for five or six days. But if the vaginal environment is acidic, it is less habitable for the X and Y sperms and they die much earlier. That is why knowing the day of ovulation is very essential to pre-selection of the sex of your baby, because if you do, the vaginal environment, friendly or hostile, becomes inconsequential.
The other important factor is the health of the husband’s sperms. Studies have shown that the sperms of men decline both in quality and quantity from age 40. It is earlier for smokers. Lifestyle and the type of food you eat also influence the quantity and quality of sperms and ability to impregnate your wife. In fact, the egg does not accept every sperm that comes its way. It is very selective and attracted more to healthy sperms. This can be a challenge for men with weak sperms or low sperm count when they want to impregnate their wives, according to research findings.
You also need some discipline and cooperation between spouses if you want to naturally pre-select the sex of your babies. For a start, pre-selection is easier when the woman is practising natural family planning as against the use of artificial contraceptives, because artificial contraceptives disrupt the cycle of women, stopping ovulation or making ovulation more unpredictable, and you do need some level of predictability in the ovulation cycle to naturally preselect the sex of your babies
In addition, the couple needs to stay off intercourse for at least five days before ovulation. This is to ensure that residue semen in the woman’s body does not interfere with her vaginal discharge and create confusion. There are a number of natural ways women know they are ovulating: the thick slimy vaginal discharge which is like phlegm (catarrh, as some refer to it), some women feel a sharp pain on the side or lower abdomen when the egg is released, heightened sense of smell, breast soreness or tenderness, increased sexual urge and change in body temperature..
Just in case you are wondering why I write categorically on the efficacy of this method, I used it to preselect the sex of all my children, boys and girls accurately, so I know it is effective