While we all know that the best way to predict your baby’s gender is with an ultrasound and not with Drano, taking a look at some of the overall trends in gender and birth might give us some insight as to how things might be leaning (at least while you wait for that 20-week ultrasound).

Here are some factors that may play a role in whether or not you have a boy:

• You live with your partner. One particular study looked at 86,000 pregnancies. Couples that lived together when the baby was conceived were slightly higher to have a boy. 51.5% of births were male in the study. There’s no explanation, of course, why this domestic arrangement would help produce a boy, and the margin is very slight.

• You’ve been living with your partner under a year. One study shows a slight increase in male births – just under 1% – when the couples lived together less than a year. One theory is that these couples are more likely to have sex frequently, giving a slight advantage to the male sperm. Here again, the odds are very small.

• You have high stress. High stress periods, such as those following a war, tend to lead to slightly higher male birth rates by about 52% to 48% for girls. There are theories as to why this might be the case, including the higher stress levels of certain hormones like cortisol or testosterone in a woman’s system.

• You have a higher caloric intake. A British study looked at more than 700 women during pregnancy. The women who had an average intake of 2,400 calories a day or more, 56% had boys. For those women who had an average of around 2,250 or less, 45% had boys.

While you can’t truly control whether you’re going to have a boy or a girl, sometimes it’s fun to speculate. There’s no reason to go out and start eating more food if you’re hoping for a boy or go on a diet if you’re hoping for a girl, of course. The good news is that, no matter what, you have about a 50% chance of having a baby of the preferred gender.

Wondering about the gender of the baby you’re carrying is as natural as breathing. Any expectant mother who tells you she isn’t curious about whether she’s having a boy or a girl either already knows (or thinks she knows) or is lying.

These days, we expect to know the gender of our babies with relative certainty by the midway point of the pregnancy. Ultrasound technology has advanced to the point that we can know with 90% accuracy whether we’re carrying a boy or a girl at 20 weeks gestation. That’s great, except:

• No one really wants to wait 20 weeks to find out
• 90% accuracy still means 1 in 10 will get wrong information about baby’s gender

Some are content to wait and wonder, but many want to know sooner. Since moving the ultrasound up isn’t generally an option, we’re left with using traditional baby gender prediction methods or ponying up to buy commercially available baby gender tests.

Traditional Baby Gender Prediction Methods

Beliefs about traditional baby gender prediction methods range from blind faith to dismissing them as old wives’ tales. Blind faith in a scientifically unproven prediction method probably doesn’t give you any better chances of accurately predicting your baby’s gender than flipping a coin and assigning heads to “it’s a boy” and tails to “it’s a girl.”

Still, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that there might be a very good reason why some old wives’ tales have stuck around long enough to become part of our oral tradition. Maybe there’s some truth to them. Many hold firmly to beliefs such as:

• Where you’re carrying the baby (high or low) indicates the baby’s gender
• Suspending your wedding ring on a string over your belly and observing whether it swings back and forth (it’s a boy!) or in circles (it’s a girl!) can predict your baby’s gender
• Mixing your urine with Draino can predict your baby’s gender: If the color changes, buy blue paint, if it stays the same, invest in pink

At the very worst, these methods offer a 50/50 chance of predicting your baby’s gender and can be fun.

Other Medical Baby Gender Prediction Methods

Other than ultrasound, the two main medical gender prediction methods are amniocenteses and CVS testing. Unfortunately, both of these are more invasive and carry more risk than ultrasound, so doctors won’t order them just to satisfy your curiosity. Generally, you need to have a serious risk factor in your pregnancy before a doctor will order one. These tests are about 99% accurate.

Of course, there is no perfect gender prediction test. Even the most accurate and scientific tests still have the potential to get it wrong. Who knows? Maybe that’s to keep us guessing, if only a little, until the big day finally comes.

For as long as couples have been having babies, couples have been trying to accurately predict whether they should invest in wallpaper with butterflies and flowers or airplanes and trucks. Today, medical science can give couples a fairly definitive answer about the baby’s gender by the second trimester.

Still, most couples want to try to at least guess at the baby’s gender before they know for sure. At worst, baby gender prediction methods have a 50/50 shot at being correct and they aren’t generally harmful to the expectant mother or the child.

Still, even medical professionals acknowledge that some baby gender prediction methods have more validity than others. Here are some of the gender prediction methods many doctors recognize as being at least reasonably accurate:

• Beats per minute. It’s said that if your baby’s heart rate is faster than 140 beats per minute, you’re having a girl. While medical professionals don’t acknowledge the number, they do acknowledge that baby girls’ heart rates are faster than baby boys’. Unfortunately, the difference isn’t really noticeable until the third trimester, well after you can know your baby’s gender much more accurately based on ultrasound imaging.
• Morning sickness throughout the day. Traditionally, it has been said that women who have morning sickness all day long are carrying a girl. Medical professionals acknowledge that women who are carrying girls are more likely to have severe or prolonged morning sickness due to higher levels of hCG, a pregnancy hormone which expectant mothers have at noticeably higher levels when carrying a girl.

Most medical professionals will tell you that other gender prediction methods, whether the Chinese gender prediction calendar, the Drano method, dangling a ring in front of your belly or some other method, are unfounded and have a roughly 50% chance of correctly predicting your baby’s gender.

As early as 18 weeks, your ultrasound can predict your baby’s gender with an accuracy of about 85%. That’s significantly better than any traditional method, including the ones which doctors recognize as having some degree of validity.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t try to predict your baby’s gender ahead of the ultrasound. By all means, if you have a traditional gender prediction method you believe in or enjoy, have a good time with it. Who knows? There could be something to it that medical science simply hasn’t figured out. At worst, you have a 50% chance of correctly predicting your baby’s gender.

Even since couples have been having babies, they’ve wanted to figure out ahead of time whether they were having a baby boy or a baby girl. In today’s world, we have medical imaging which can predict a baby’s gender with a high degree of accuracy as early as the twelve weeks into the pregnancy (around the beginning of the second trimester). Still, most parents are curious and many are willing to try more traditional methods of gender prediction while they wait for the official results.

Here are some of the more popular traditional methods of gender prediction:

1. Watch your cravings. Many people believe that the kinds of food you crave during your pregnancy will give you a hint as to whether you’re having a boy or a girl. Are you craving potato chips and pickles? Stock up on blue paint. Would you rather have chocolate and ice cream? Stick with pink.
2. Mayan numerology. Lots of airplay has been given to Mayan predictions of the world’s end in December 2012, but they had a more useful legend for expectant parents. According to their tradition, if a mother’s age (in years) and the year of conception are both even or both odd numbers, you will have a girl. If one is even and the other is odd, you’ll have a strapping Mayan warrior.
3. Zits are for girls. Some believe that you are more likely to break out in zits if you are having a girl. Traditionally, this is believed to be because that little cutie growing inside of you is stealing as much of your beauty as she can grab.
4. His and Lows. One of the most widely accepted gender prediction methods is to simply look into a full length mirror and see whether you’re carrying the baby high or low. If your baby bump is low, it’s a bouncing baby boy. If you’re carrying higher, it’s a girl. Of course, by the time you can tell whether you’re carrying high or low, you can have the ultrasound technician give you a much more accurate prediction based on what kind of genitalia she sees.
5. Chinese Prediction Calendar. When a prediction method is used for 7,000 years, there’s a chance there’s something to it. Many Chinese (and an increasing number of Westerners) swear by the Chinese gender prediction calendar, which used a mother’s age at the time of conception and the month the baby was conceived to predict babies’ gender.

Most gender prediction methods have their defenders who swear by them and detractors who think of them as fun but unscientific diversions. Even the worst gender prediction method has a 50% chance of success, though, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with being curious while you wait for the definitive answer.

If you ask your parents or grandparents, they will probably they will probably tell you that there was a time when expectant parents had to wait for the big day when baby made her (or his) grand entrance to find out the gender of their new baby. These days, most of us find out our baby’s gender during ultrasounds in the second trimester. As imaging improves, gender predictions are quite accurate.

But who says you need to wait until the second trimester to accurately predict whether you should be shopping for pink wallpaper or blue paint? Not the Chinese. The Chinese have been using gender prediction methods for thousands of years. Some claim they have over 90% accuracy.

The primary method used for early gender prediction is the Chinese gender prediction calendar. The version most often used was discovered in a royal tomb in the 1300s. The calendar is believed to have been developed by ancient Chinese scientists. There is some disagreement regarding how long the gender prediction calendar has been in use. Many suggest that the Chinese have been using gender prediction calendars for 7,000 years or more. Others suggest that the practice is somewhat more recent. In any case, Chinese have used the calendar for no less than 700 years.

When Chinese emigrated to the West, they brought the gender prediction calendar with them. While many Western people view it with suspicion, or see it as being entertaining, many others have come to embrace gender prediction calendars, along with other Eastern health care practices.

How It Works

To use a Chinese gender prediction calendar, you need to know the age of the mother in years at the time of conception and the lunar month at the time of conception. With these two pieces of information, you consult the gender prediction calendar. Proponents claim that you can predict the gender of your baby by cross referencing the age of the mother and the month at the time of conception.

Uses

Historically, the Chinese people have always preferred to have male offspring. Culturally, this was considered more prestigious. Historically, it was also more practical in a largely agrarian society.

Because many Chinese couples preferred to have boys, many would use the Chinese gender prediction calendar pro-actively. Essentially, they would consult the calendar to see when their best chances of conceiving a girl were. By saving sexual intercourse for those times, they believed that they would improve their chances of bearing sons. Presumably, the same method could be used if someone wanted to conceive a daughter.