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The 'science' of baby gender

By Jessica Norman | Media General

Published: December 31, 2008

The critter in my stomach is barely a flutter, but the great Gender Prognosticators are hard at work determining whether we should invest in pink or blue.

It started early in the first trimester, when I couldn't get enough hot wings and spicy salsa. A nurse told me perhaps Peanut leaned toward the male persuasion.

Are there other ways to figure it out before doctors point a fuzzy camera at Peanut's private parts?
Boy was I about to find out.

First was an online Chinese calendar. Enter your birthday and the date of conception and this ancient chart will tell you the child's gender. (Want to see if it works? Try chinesefortunecalendar.com/PredictSex.htm). According to the all-knowing Internet, my child will be a boy.

Then I was told to get a cup of powder Drain-o, which is apparently hard to find nowadays. I was instructed to pour in my first morning urine and wait for the color to change. Brown would mean girl and green would mean boy.

My husband wasn't too keen on me handling strong pipe cleaners during pregnancy, though, so I didn't try this one. (But maybe that would explain what's wrong with my crazy cousins …)

Another aunt asked for Peanut's heart rate. Slower points to boy, faster points to girl. She predicted that a heart rate of 140 beats per minute would mean a baby boy.

Then there's my dad. The poor man has faked scientific knowledge for decades, but as the children got older we grew wise to his hot-air theories. That didn't stop him from coming up with a grand equation based on prior generations, an affinity for left-handedness and factoring in variables such as the grandparents' age and the uncles' baldness. His deduction: girl.

The tips keep coming in. Check out some of them in a handy quiz at childbirth.org/articles/boyorgirl.html.

I guess I'll just have to wait until the 20-week ultrasound and settle this once and for all (unless we get a false reading — then it's back to the old wives' tales.)