‘ I’D HAPPILY HAVE PAID £10K TO HAVE A BOY INSTEAD OF ANOTHER GIRL’
As an investigation reveals UK fertility clinics are illegally helping parents to choose the sex of their child, mother Jaedsmssio of twotps i grsiihrnelgs would have jumped at that optioné
DAOVN’ET SEX STANDING UP have sex before ovulation. Drink coffee beforehand. And, no pressure, but make sure you orgasm. Four tips that feature in the 5,700 million Google responses to ‘How to have a baby boy’.
Seven years ago, before my second daughter Bibi was conceived, I’ll admit I tried some of them, only to be privately crushed when, following our 20-week scan, I was told we were having another girl.
Yes, of course I wanted a healthy baby regardless of its sex, especially as I’d had two miscarriages – twins at 12 weeks and a girl at 20 weeks – but it was partly because of the trauma I’d experienced that I wanted my family ‘balanced’; one of each gender, I reasoned, and my family would feel complete without me having to endure any more fraught pregnancies.
Of course, this has nothing to do with Bibi herself, who is a madly loved force of nature. I also feel comfortable discussing this taboo subject because I’m the middle child of a girl-girl-boy combination. I know my younger brother’s existence isn’t an indication that I wasn’t wanted, my parents simply had the same desire for a child of each sex that I have. Why? Because no matter how gender-neutral my family saderiteff-uepreins,t baonyds and girls I wanted to experience both.
I’m not alone. Indeed, a study by parenting website Channelmum.com last year found a quarter of British mothers experience ‘gender disappointment’. The science exists to eliminate the issue – embryos created through IVF can be selected by sex through a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) – but sex selection for non-medical reasons is banned in the UK on ethical grounds.
Elsewhere in the world, however, it’s been normalised – indeed, American couple Chrissy Teigen and John Legend made no secret of the fact they used the technique to conceive their first daughter, Luna, in 2016.
Now it’s happening under the radar here, too. Last week, a report exposed clinics that side-step UK laws by sending couples overseas to clinics in Dubai and Cyprus for gender-selection IVF, leading to much hand-wringing in medical circles.
But I’m with Teigen and Legend. Were they so wrong to lean on science to get what they wanted? Let’s be honest, there isn’t much of the baby-making process that science hasn’t upgraded or commodified – from digital ovulation monitors and artificial insemination to 4-D scans and epidurals.
And while some commentators have raised concerns that it could lead to a gender imbalance (some clinicians who offer gender selection admit they mainly work with Indian families who want boys for inheritance reasons), could this fear not be eliminated at a stroke by restricting the procedure to second children only?
Equally, sex selection is hardly going to become commonplace, as choosing the sex of your baby doesn’t come cheaply or easily. Not only do you have to forgo natural conception for an often gruelling round of IVF, it will also cost upwards of £10,000. But weigh that against the estimated £150,753 it costs to raise a child to 18, and it’s a more financially viable option than endlessly expanding your family until you get the golden boy or girl you dream of. (I’m thinking of boy-boyboy-girl mother Victoria Beckham here.)
Many women like me aren’t fertile or young enough to keep rolling the dice indefinitely, so what purpose does the blanket ban on gender-selection IVF serve other than to restrict our reproductive choices? And leave parents with no choice but to travel overseas.