The women who’ll do ANYTHING to conceive GIRL a
Eating oranges. Only making love in winter. Waiting for a full moon. Meet...
ONLY making love with her husband in the missionary position. Constantly eating oranges. And — extraordinarily — banning sex on her honeymoon because ‘it fell at the wrong time’.
Lisa Humphries had gone to amazing lengths to try to ensure she would conceive a baby girl. No old wives’ tale was too bizarre, no suggestion from the many online forums devoted to so- called ‘gender swaying’ was considered too peculiar. Already the mother of a young son, she was entirely focused on making sure that her next nursery would be pink-hued, rather than blue.
So when, at 20 weeks pregnant, she waited for the sonographer to deliver the results of her ultrasound, she prayed she had done enough. And when the longed-for words ‘You’re having a baby girl’ came, she wept tears of joy.
So, can peculiar diets, different sexual positions and lovemaking at specific times of the month really deliver much-desired baby girls to the desperate?
Lisa, who is now 38, is one of many women who emphatically believe so.
And, despite the fact that a baby’s gender is decided solely by whether the sperm that fertilises the egg is male or female in type — not to mention the lack of scientific evidence behind any of her techniques — Lisa, from Chelmsford, Essex, insists that her unorthodox methods certainly seem to have worked for her.
That sex ban while on her dream honeymoon in Cape Town and Mauritius with her husband Nathan, a company director?
Essential, she says, because it fell at the point in her monthly cycle when she believed making love would have been most likely to produce another son.
‘I read about the Shettles method
[developed in the Sixties and named after its American creator, Dr Landrum Shettles] that says if you have sex close to the time of your ovulation — which coincided with our honeymoon — you’re at greater risk of conceiving a boy,’ says Lisa.
Why? ‘Because male sperm are said to be faster swimmers, so they would have reached the egg first.’
Female sperm, meanwhile, apparently have greater endurance and live longer than their speedier male counterparts.
To maximise your chance of a girl, the Shettles method advises having sex two to four days before you ovulate so the male sperm have died off by the time an egg becomes available.
But what did her husband — who is now 47 — think of a sex ban at that most romantic of times? ‘He was surprisingly good-natured about it. He realised that if I’d fallen pregnant with a boy on our honeymoon, he’d never have heard the end of it from me.’
Lisa — who is now mum to Ben, nine, Elsie, seven, and Isla, two — also tweaked her diet to make a daughter more likely.
And the endless oranges? ‘I read the acidity could kill off male sperm.’
And when she permitted lovemaking — at the right time of the month, of course — she made sure she was doing all she could to hinder the male sperm and help the females.
‘I would elevate my legs after sex to give the slower female sperm a helping hand. I even did headstands.’
Sexual positions apparently helped, too: ‘I insisted we only had sex in the missionary position, rather than positions that penetrate more deeply, to ensure any male sperm were deposited as far away from my cervix as possible to give the females a chance to catch up.’
While it all sounds a little strange, Lisa, a former NVQ exam assessor, is perfectly sane. And her story reflects the extraordinary lengths to which many thousands of women go in order to determine their baby’s gender.
STATISTICS suggest that if they were able to pick the gender of their child, women would overwhelmingly choose a girl. One study by parenting website Netmums revealed that while 45 per cent of women wanted girls and 32 per cent didn’t mind, just 22 per cent actively wanted boys.
More alarmingly, one in 1,000 women admitted to terminating their pregnancy after discovering they were carrying a baby of the ‘wrong’ sex. Though abortion as a method of gender selection is not, strictly speaking, illegal it is hugely controversial.
In September 2013, two doctors narrowly avoided prosecution after agreeing to arrange abortions for women who did not want girls — a worrying phenomenon seen in some ethnic communities.
Clare Murphy, external affairs director of the BPAS (formerly the British Pregnancy Advisory Service) explains: ‘ Gender selection is not a grounds for abortion as laid out in the 1967 Act, which made abortion lawful in certain circumstances.
‘However, doctors try to support a woman’s choice as far as they can within the law.
‘It is not illegal for a woman to have an abortion where foetal sex is a factor in her decision, but she must meet the grounds of the Act — a doctor must feel her mental or physical health is at risk if she were to continue the pregnancy.’
Remarkably, feeling disappointed with your baby’s sex is so common that it’s a recognised psychological condition known as Gender Disappointment.
All rather horrifying for those 3.5 million people in Britain who have difficulty conceiving. And, isn’t a baby’s health the most important thing — not whether it will be dressed in pink or blue?
Regardless, Lisa’s sex selection regime isn’t the only one out there. There are many other supposed guarantors of a baby girl, from eating diets rich in calcium and magnesium to avoiding potassium and salt (the other way round if you want a boy).
Other off-the-wall suggestions include timing sex to coincide with different seasons — have sex in winter for a girl and summer for a boy — or consulting the Chinese lunar calendar.
All these methods and more are used by thousands of women.
But Dr Penelope Law, a consultant obstetrician at The Portland Hospital for Women and Children in London, is sceptical.
‘The only way to ensure the sex of a baby is pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which involves creating embryos via traditional IVF and implanting only embryos of a certain sex,’ she says.
[The procedure is illegal in Britain unless the parents risk passing on a serious genetic condition. Many British women seek PGD in Europe and the U.S., where it’s widely available.]
‘ Otherwise, a baby’s sex is determined by the father since all that information is contained within his sperm,’ says Dr Law. ‘The sex of a child really is a 50/50 gamble.’
TELL that to Lisa Humphries, whose unconventional efforts to conceive a baby girl seemed to have paid off — twice. Shortly after her sexless honeymoon in September 2007, she discovered she was pregnant with a baby girl, Elsie, now seven.
Then she conceived her second daughter, Isla, now two, with the same bizarre methods.
Perhaps the real question is: why are so many modern women so determined to have a girl? Is it an exercise in vanity where they want to create mini versions of themselves?
Is it because they want to provide themselves with future ‘best friends’ or are they sub-consciously looking for someone to care for them in old age?
Whatever, many admit to being crestfallen at conceiving a boy the first time round.
‘I can’t deny when I found out I was expecting a boy during my first pregnancy in 2006, I was a tiny bit disappointed,’ says Lisa.
‘Of course, I adored Ben the moment he was born, but I couldn’t silence the feeling that I wanted a daughter.
‘I’ve always been close to my mum and wanted to replicate that relationship with a daughter of my own. Also, girls tend to stay close to their mums throughout their lives, while boys don’t.
‘I’d find myself looking enviously at baby girls in the park, desperate for a sister for Ben.
‘We always said we only wanted two children. But when we started trying for a second, I told Nathan that if we had another boy we would have to try for a third. He didn’t mind what sex the baby was, as long as it was healthy.’
Now the mother of a son and two daughters, does Lisa love her little girls more?
‘Absolutely not,’ she says. ‘It’s just that the girls make me feel our family is complete. Though I do accept the things I did to have them seem a bit crazy.’
Katie Davies also embraced some peculiar methods in the pursuit of a baby girl. Her dream combination for her family was an older girl and a younger boy.
And when she and her husband Robert, 35, who works in the NHS, started trying for a family in
After we made love, I’d lie upside down to give the ‘female’ sperm a better chance
December 2011, the timing was deliberate since she had read that conceiving a girl was more likely during the winter — a theory for which there is no scientific evidence whatsoever.
‘A baby girl was all I’d ever wanted, a feeling exacerbated when my older sister had twin daughters four years ago,’ says Katie, 28, who lives near Cardiff and works in the NHS.
‘I’d already decided that if we hadn’t conceived by early March 2012 we’d have use contraception again until the next winter.
‘ I also used the Shettles method, timing sex to give the male sperm a chance to die off before the egg was released.
‘After sex, I’d quickly turn myself upside down on the bed with my legs propped against the wall to encourage female sperm towards my cervix.’
Katie also made dietary changes, eating calcium- rich foods and leafy greens, broccoli and nuts, which are packed with magnesium — both, so she’d read, vital to conceiving a girl.
Two months after starting her regime, Katie discovered she was pregnant. Her daughter, Mollie, now three, was born in October 2012.
When the time came for Katie to try for a baby boy, she again changed her diet and sexual habits. This time, she waited for summer to try to conceive, and ate lots of potassium- rich bananas,b sprouts and potatoes, plus a liberal sprinkle of salt on her meals.
Sure enough, she conceived a boy,b Joshua, who was born in MarchM 2014.
Receptionist Donna Lambert, 28,28 also adopted unconventional methodsm when trying to conceive a girl. She’s due to give birth to a baby daughter any day now.
Donna met her partner David, 39,39 a firefighter, six years ago and legallyle adopted his son Jack, 12. SheS and David also have a son together,to Beau, 17 months.
Though she adores the boys, DonnaD admits feeling upset when shesh discovered that she was expectingex a son.
‘When the sonographer said I wasw having a boy I went to the toiletto and had a quiet cry,’ says Donna,D who lives near Romford.
‘I wasn’t upset because I was havingh a boy. I was upset because I wasn’t having a girl, if that makes sense.
‘I worried that I wouldn’t bond with him and did a lot of research inton gender disappointment aheadah of the birth to try to come to terms with it.’
BUT the moment Beau was born she ‘fell utterly in love with him’. Still, Donna couldn’t sh shake her yearning for a girl. ‘It w was primal — I had no control ov over it,’ she says.
‘I’d lost a baby girl when I was 18 weeks pregnant in a previous re relationship, which my desire for a daughter all the stronger.’
Donna admits she became obsessed with ‘ gender swaying’ websites, books and forums before she started trying for her second child last January.
She replaced the healthy meals she’d been fastidious about in her first pregnancy with calcium-rich and sugary foods she’d read could boost her chances of a daughter.
‘ I drank pints of milk and swapped sandwiches for omelettes at lunch,’ she says. ‘I also began baking, having read that eating cakes and shortbread might help.
‘And I insisted David and I abstained from sex around ovulation to try to stop male sperm winning the race to the egg.
‘On some websites it advises men should drink strong coffee just before sex to make female sperm more active.
‘But David is a realist and doesn’t believe in non-scientific theories so I didn’t even broach that idea. In fact, I didn’t reveal the extent of what I was doing to try to determine the sex of our baby.’
When Donna discovered she was pregnant last June, there was one question on her mind: had her efforts paid off?
Impatient to know, her obsession shifted to her 12- week scan pictures, an age at which it is virtually impossible to conclusively identify a baby’s gender. She posted them on online forums in the vain hope people would be able to identify the sex of her baby.
She paid for a private gender scan at 16 weeks — which was inconclusive.
A scan a month later confirmed she was expecting the daughter for whom she’d already bought piles of pink clothes.
‘I can’t wait to be able to do my little girl’s hair before school, go shopping with her and choose her wedding dress with her one day,’ says Donna, gently stroking her bump.
‘If I’d been expecting another boy, I would have been happy to have a healthy son.
‘But then my family would have always felt incomplete — and we can’t really afford to have more than three children.
‘So I’m just thrilled to be having a daughter. And I’d like to think that some of the things I tried helped.’