Waiting for the birth of the expected child is a time of many hopes and dreams. We imagine the future of our child, her unique abilities, and extraordinary features that she will reveal later in life. We plan her future, just like our parents planned our future. Of course, not everything can be planned or predicted in advance. Especially when it comes to completely basic matters. One of them is the question of our child’s gender. However, does the choice of gender depend only on blind fate, or can we somehow influence this matter as well?
Child’s gender – what does it depend on?
About planning a child’s gender has been said for many years. Our grandparents knew their home ways to predict or even make predictions plan the sex of the child. Nowadays, medicine has made great strides in making it possible to choose a specific one gender our consolation. However, not all of the available methods are completely effective. Most of them are quite expensive for this.
The gender of the child it is predetermined at the time of fertilization. Fertilization occurs when the reproductive cells – the male sperm and the female egg – fuse together. As a result, their genetic load is combined, which determines gender. Plec depends exactly on the pair of chromosomes; for women it is the pair XX, for men it is the pair XY. The sperm and egg contain only one chromosome of this pair, so it would fix the sex of the child, and thus the human genetic background, the sperm and egg genes must be combined. The sperm cell, which may contain an X or a Y chromosome, is decisive, while the egg always carries the X chromosome.
Methods – how to plan the sex of a child?
There are many methods to be declarative to choose the gender of our child. Unfortunately, most of them are ineffective, and some are additionally based on shaky scientific foundations. It is worth looking at the most important of them, which will allow you to see the extent to which you can choose the sex of the child is available in our situation.
The available methods could be classified according to the simple category of interference with the fertilization process. This allows several groups of methods to be distinguished from each other.
The first group will include methods such as: proper diet, observation of the course and performing an ovulation test in the future mother. These are safe methods that do not interfere with the process of fertilization, but are very ineffective. Thanks to their non-intrusive nature, you can try them out yourself, but remember that the chance of success is slim. These methods are described in numerous medical-related books and are often based on the use of an appropriate calendar.
More effective methods involve the use of advanced medical technology and an invasive approach to fertilization. However, unlike in the case of natural, observational techniques, they allow for real planning the sex of the child.
Two methods should be mentioned: sperm sorting and the in vitro method.
Sorting sperm is a method that uses advanced medical technology. It consists in dividing sperm according to their genetic makeup, in terms of the presence of sex chromosomes. A popular method sorting sperm jest the Microsort method. It uses a flow cytometer, a device designed to diagnose sperm in terms of their DNA chain. This is done based on the weight of the sperm – those that carry the Y chromosome are lighter, while the sperm with the X chromosome are heavier. Based on the unit weight, sperm are divided into two genetic groups. Then, it is fertilized by placing a separate group of sperm cells in the immediate vicinity of the egg cell. The effectiveness of this method is estimated at about 88% for girls and about 80% for boys.
The second method is in vitro method, also used in the case of people suffering from infertility or infertility. Unfortunately, this method is expensive. Although in vitro is a refundable treatment in some places in our country, the refund applies to infertile or infertile couples, and not the willingness to choose the sex of the child. The advantage of this method is that it gives you 100% certainty about the gender of the developing child.
In vitro is an artificial form of fertilization, which means that it takes place outside the woman’s body. After the embryo is formed, around the third day, a test is performed showing its genetic profile, which also takes into account sex. The embryo selected by the parents is placed in the woman’s uterus (the choice may be made, for example, on the basis of gender). At this point, there are doubts about the ethics of such conduct, therefore on gender selection allowed in Poland only in exceptional cases. For example, when the sex of the child it can affect the course of pregnancy or affect the mother’s life (such as haemophilia, muscular dystrophy and others).