hello you are probably here with us today because you're wondering if there's anything
you could actually do to affect whether you have a boy or a girl for your next
pregnancy and truth be told there are a lot of myths about this topic yes so many things but
there actually is something you could do that is scientifically proven to give you the option to
try to do something that's going to affect whether you have a boy or a girl yes so if
this is your first time meeting us I'm Sarah I'm a board certified OB GYN and a fertility
specialist yep I'm Kurt I'm a board certified pediatrician and we are the doctors bjorkman
foreign [Music]
voice remember some wonderful little germ monster who goes to preschool with other little germ
monsters and then brings it home to share with mom and dad seems like just about every week yes so
many of you may have always dreamed of having a little boy or a little girl and so you are
wondering is there anything you can undo it can do to increase the chances of having one or the other
there are lots of thoughts or myths out there on this topic about increasing your chances of one or
the other yeah and these are all sorts of things like do certain positions matter or having sex
at certain times of the month or even things like sperm sorting and all sorts of other things that
we're going to dive into today including something that you could actually do that there's evidence
makes a difference indeed so let's go back to the very beginning because actually the sex of
the baby is determined the moment the egg meets the sperm yeah and it's the sperm that actually
is the thing responsible for determining the sex male or female of that embryo and then
developing baby indeed so this is because females have two X chromosomes they are xx and males have
One X chromosome and one Y chromosome or XY so when women make eggs all of them carry an extra
chromosome X or X when men make sperm those sperm either carry an X chromosome or a y chromosome
and men make those sperm 50 50. 50 carry an x 50 carry away yeah so then when one egg needs
one sperm but egg automatically is just going to have one X chromosome and then it's all up
to that sperm to carry the other chromosome either an X to make a female embryo XX or a
y to make a male embryo X Y yes so this idea leads us to some of the myths about increasing
your chances of getting one sex or the other and it all comes back to the sperm now a lot of these
myths and thoughts about your ability to control having a boy or a girl is around the thought that
there's actually a smaller amount of DNA in a y chromosome and so a sperm carrying a y chromosome
could potentially move faster but might not live as long as a sperm carrying an X chromosome
so myth number one is that if you have sex closer to ovulation you're more likely to
get a male because the sperm carrying a y chromosome would be the first one to
get to that egg yeah but there is no data to support that these chromosomes are faster or
more likely to give you a boy if you have sex closer to the time of ovulation correct correct
now the flip side of myth number one brings us to myth number two in that the thought
that having sex earlier two to four days before ovulation gives those Chrome those
sperm carrying X chromosomes more time to get to the egg increasing your chances of
having a female but again there is no data to support any of this but we do appreciate
all the creative thinking that went into this theory yes absolutely though all of this does
make me a little nervous as a fertility doctor because I worry that if people are trying for
a boy they may be trying to wait till the very last second and they aren't having sex kind of
every couple days during that fertile window because again they're trying to wait till the
very last second because they want a boy and what we do know is that Studies have shown
pregnancy rates are highest if you are having sex kind of every other day during your fertile
window are those five to six days before for ovulation so if you are trying to conceive
check out our trying to get pregnant fast video with all sorts of more detailed tips for you
myth number three is that certain sex positions can increase your chances of having a boy or a
girl right now there's a thought that missionary position is more associated
with having a girl and the idea here is that with missionary position it may take a longer for the
sperm to reach the egg which then gives those slower X carrying sperm time to get to the egg
and also that any position that has the sperm closer to the cervix might make
you more likely to have a boy again absolutely absolutely suggest any
engine makes you more likely to have a boy or girl and in fact there actually was a study
done that kind of debunks both of these myths so this study looked at couples who underwent IUI or
intrauterine insemination with IUI spermis placed inside the uterus right at the time
of ovulation so if that theory were correct all babies born after IUI should be male because you
are putting sperm closer to the egg than is even possible with any position and you are putting
it there right at the time of ovulation yeah and shockingly the results of this study showed that
half the babies were male and half the babies were female correct so again this is just showing that
neither timing nor position really increases your chances of having a male or a female
myth number four you can use something called sperm sorting to affect your chances of having
either a boy or a girl but maybe you're wondering what is sperm sorting anyway so this again goes
back to the idea that the Y chromosome may have less DNA than the X chromosome so the
idea is you can use a centrifuge to sort the sperm based on density or you can use
dye thinking that there would be less uptake of dye in a y sperm because it has less DNA
Studies have shown that the accuracy on this ends up being about 50 50. correct that's
perfect yeah so that is of course what you get at Baseline so this is not a real really useful tool
yeah now when you see any of these different methods online or different programs you can
do or people who swear by a certain method know that they are all guaranteed to work about half
the time or 50 of the time much like just random selection and nature would do this is very true
is there anything that actually does work and gives people a chance to have some control over
having a boy or a girl yes there is one way that you can do tell what your Embry is prior
to implantation and that is by doing IVF creating embryos and then doing pre-implantation genetic
testing yeah that's PGT right what is that yes so pre-implantation genetic testing so when you
do IVF or in vitro fertilization check out our many videos about uh that process and our journey
there but during IVF you stimulate the ovaries to make as many eggs as you safely can you then
retrieve those eggs with a surgical procedure and then you mix those eggs with sperm in the lab to
create embryos those little embryos are grown out or cultured for five or six days in the lab
and once they reach the blastocyst stage which is day five to six of human embryo development
those embryos are able to be biopsied so a few cells are taken from the outer layer of the
blastocyst that is called the trophectoderm it is the part that becomes the placenta
so this biopsy is sent off to a genetics lab for testing and then they give you results of the
chromosome makeup of those embryos including are they XX or XY if you want to know that information
um this testing is 97 to 98 accurate so you have a very good idea if your embryos are chromosomally
normal as well as the sex of those embryos we've been asked a lot since we did IVF if we knew the
sex of the embryo we put back and as it turns out we actually didn't no we did not we ended up
doing a day five fresh embryo transfer meaning I did my retrieval and then five days later we
transferred an embryo a day five embryo back don't ever freezeman right without freezing it nope and
so when you do the biopsies for pre-implantation genetic testing that happens usually either on day
five or six then the embryos are frozen while those biopsies are sent off to the lab and it
there's a one to two week kind of turnaround time to get those genetic testing results back so we
put back an untested day five embryo and got a boy yeah so um it's fun like we just think we
said hey we'd be happy with a healthy baby right um kind of want to be surprised and so here we are
um we've got a girl and a boy on the way yeah this whole sex selection with IVF like definitely there
are many people that have feelings or thoughts of is this okay right how does the American Society
for Reproductive Medicine feel about using IVF solely for a sex selection right so sex
selection sometimes called family balancing is one reason why families might want to do IVF however
IVF is the time intensive physically involved and expensive process that is not without risks
check out our IVF complications video um we lived through it it was not a fun time
um but anyway so because of this the non-medical use of IVF with pre-implantation genetic testing
just for sex selection is an ethically controversial practice yeah and as you
can imagine there are Arguments for and against this some of the main arguments for using IVF for
sex selection center around patient autonomy and things like reproductive Liberty right you could
also Imagine That arguments kind of against doing this kind of factor in their risks and burdens to
the patient and if a physician should allow a patient to undergo those just for the purpose
of choosing the sex of their baby right um or things like gender bias sex stereotyping or
is it possible that someone is actually being being coerced into having a baby of a certain
gender and being put through IVF to do that right so ultimately asrm the kind of governing body for
Reproductive Medicine and IVF practices asrm recommends that practitioners take really a lot
careful a lot of time to make sure that patients are fully informed about the risks and burdens of
doing the pre-implantation genetic testing and to make sure again they are not being pressured
by a partner or someone to have another child of a certain sex so because again there are feelings
about this and it is ethically controversial clinics are encouraged to have written policy
to talk about when sex selection is an under what circumstances this non-medical sex selection is
available and allowed in their clinic in other words some clinics offer it and some clinics do
not if it is something you're interested in ask about it ahead of time and also if you don't want
to know the sex of your baby um you don't have to and there are ways to just be surprised and it can
be just as much of a surprise as if you had a baby the Natural Way old-fashioned way totally they
can still do pre-implantation genetic testing let you know that that embryo has the correct
number of chromosomes and just not disclose that it is XX or X Y so that is also totally an option
so those are the myths debunked about ways to increase your chances of having a male or a
female they are all 50 effective it's great it's like nature there is only one way to
really be able to pick one way or the other we hope that you enjoyed our little myth busting
session and we hope you're all subscribed and look forward to seeing you next week bye guys
we're doctors but not your doctors anything we've said in this video
is for education or entertainment purposes only it is not medical
advice any specific medical questions you have should be directed to your provider