Will having sex more often affect the gender of the baby if I get pregnant?
People who email me often confess that when they are trying to get pregnant, they will have sex as much as possible during their fertility cycle to give themselves the best chance of conceiving. Some of them ask if this method will affect or influence the sex of their baby. May. I will explain why in the next article.
If you don’t care what gender you get, having sex often when you’re trying to conceive is a decent idea: The reasoning behind this method makes a lot of sense. You only have a small window of time each month when you can actually get pregnant. Therefore, its possibilities are already limited. Every time you have sex, more sperm is released, creating a better chance that you will get pregnant. It only makes sense that you want to give yourself as many opportunities for success as possible. Having sex as often as possible is one way to do this.
However, if you want to choose the sex of your baby, timing is very important. When you’re just having sex anytime you feel like it, then you take this careful timing out of the equation and you could be leaving the gender of your baby up to mother nature or chance.
Why timing of intercourse affects whether you conceive a boy or a girl: To make a relatively long and complicated story more simplistic and short, having sex before ovulation favors the conception of a girl, while having sex after the egg is released (ovulation) increases the chances of having a boy. But, if you’re just trying to conceive without regard to where you are in her ovulation cycle, then you’re potentially ignoring or missing out on a very important variable.
Yes, choosing the gender of your baby often means having less sex during your ovulation cycle. And yes, this means fewer sperm chromosomes, which means less chance of success. But honestly, trying it each and every day of your cycle can be overkill. If you know exactly when you ovulate and plan accordingly, then you still have decent and very specific odds. Whether or not you accept this method really depends on how important choosing the gender of your baby is to you. Of course, for this method to work, you need firm control over your ovulation day. I highly recommend a good predictor that is used regularly so you know exactly when the time is right.
When (or how often) you have sex isn’t the only variable that influences the gender of your baby: Timing is a big problem in gender selection, but it’s not the only one. How you have sex is just as important as when or how often you have it. What I mean is that the positions you use can also be important. Deeper penetration will help along the Y sperm which favors the baby boy. Shallow penetration is what you want for X sperm if you are looking for a girl.
The last thing you want to look at is your vaginal fluid and vaginal environment and whether it is acidic or alkaline. You want it to be acidic if you’re trying for a daughter and alkaline if you’re trying for a son. There are scientific and specific reasons for this, but this is the short version. So if your method has been to have frequent intercourse when you were trying to get pregnant, there’s nothing wrong with that if you really have no preference as to whether you end up with a boy or a girl. But, if you prefer one gender over another, your sexual frequency should reflect this.