For centuries, people have been trying to figure out exactly what they should do in order to conceive a boy. Of course, this mattered a lot more in cultures where male offspring were preferred; in the case of famous royalty like Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, for example, it proved to be fatal.
Today, couples certainly like to try to predict their baby’s gender, and may simply prefer to have a boy or a girl. After all, if you’ve already got two daughters, it might be nice to have a son.
There are all sorts of things you can do to try to encourage your baby to be conceived either male or female, some of which work and most of which don’t. For example, there are old wives tales that tell you to eat dessert on the night of conception if you want a girl, but meat and salty foods if you want a boy.
Chinese gender selection charts will tell you that the actual date of conception has something to do with whether you have a boy or a girl. Obviously you can try to follow these, but there’s nothing in the way of scientific proof to back up the theory.
In the 1960s, Dr. Shettles proposed the idea that the timing and position of lovemaking could impact the gender of your baby. Dr. Shettles looked at the differences between boy-producing and girl-producing sperm, and ptu together techniques for conception based on those characteristics.
For example, Dr. Shettles suggested that boy-producing sperm is less hearty, and needs more help in getting to the cervix. Deeper penetration, then – such as occurs in missionary position or in man-behind position – would be more likely to conceive a boy. It’s also important in the Shettles method to have sex as near ovulation as possible, as that’s when the woman’s cervical mucus is most friendly to boy-producing sperm.
The good news is this: even if the method you use to try to conceive a child of a specific gender doesn’t have much in the way of scientific backing, you always have a 50% chance of conceiving the gender you’re hoping for.