Every second couple expecting a child has their own preferences regarding who should be born to them - a girl or a boy. The question of how long the sex of the child is formed during pregnancy is especially relevant for them.

When the gender of the child is formed

Often, interest in the sex of the unborn child is dictated by understandable curiosity, less often there are medical reasons. It is about the risk of transmission of the disease through the male or female line. In this case, a biopsy of the chorionic villi is done at 7-10 weeks of pregnancy, but the procedure is not safe, and can provoke a miscarriage.

In the first weeks of formation, all embryos are endowed with female sex characteristics. Only after 9 weeks is certainty. This is the time when the sex of the child is laid.

If an egg is fertilized with a male Y-chromosome sperm, the embryo begins to develop certain organs and body parts that distinguish boys.

However, at this time, the signs are difficult to distinguish, and regardless of the doctor's experience, it is possible to determine the sex of the embryo with an accuracy of only 50%. In the third month, the baby's gender is still developing. And this with each new week increases the chances of finding out the sex of the child.

So, it turns out that it is possible to find out in which week the sex of the child is formed, but it is no longer possible to influence the sex of the baby after conception. Those wishing to give birth to a son or to give birth to a daughter should worry about this in advance.

The most popular today are methods for planning the sex of an infant by the date of conception and adherence to a special French diet.

1. In accordance with the first method, in order to give birth to a daughter, you must have sexual intercourse no later than 2-3 days before ovulation. And in order to eventually get a son, sex must occur either on the day of ovulation or the day before.
2. One of the basic principles of diet planning. It is recommended to eat a large amount of foods that contain potassium and salt if parents want to give birth to a son, or magnesium and calcium if a couple wants to give birth to a girl.

In addition to the above methods, there are many different recommendations and more or less effective ways of "programming" the sex of the baby. However, whichever of these methods the future parents prefer, they need to remember that no method promises one hundred percent guarantee, and it is better to prepare in advance for the fact that the sex of the baby may not coincide with their expectations.

Pregnancy is a happy and exciting period in every woman's life. While expecting a baby, she constantly worries about his health and development. Before giving birth, future parents buy a crib, a stroller, clothes for the baby and choose a name, which explains the desire to know as soon as possible whether they will have a son or daughter. In this regard, families expecting a baby are often interested in how long it is possible to determine the sex of the child; the choice of methods is great - blood test, examination with an ultrasound machine, sampling of the contents of the uterus, etc.

What determines the gender of the child

During intercourse, about 300-500 million spermatozoa penetrate into a woman's body. Since the vagina is acidic, most of them die immediately. Only the strongest sperm continue to move, passing into cervical mucus, which has a weakly alkaline environment, after which they continue their journey through the fallopian tube to fertilize an egg at the end of the path. Scientists believe that already at this stage it is determined whether a boy or a girl will be born.

Sperm, which are carriers of the X chromosomes, move at a lower speed than the carriers of the Y chromosomes. It is believed that when fertilized on the day of ovulation or the next day (as a rule, it is 14-15 days of the menstrual cycle), faster sperm with a male chromosome get to the egg first, so a boy is likely to be born. However, since eggs with female chromosomes are more viable, if they are conceived a couple of days before ovulation, their chance of fertilizing an egg is much higher. In this case, the birth of a girl should be expected.

There are other factors that can affect a child's gender. Their reliability has not been proven and are questioned by doctors. These factors include:

1. Diet of a pregnant woman. If a woman wants a boy, then her diet should contain more meat products, cereals, potatoes, dried fruits. Drinking tea and alkaline water is also recommended. To become a mother of a daughter, it is better to give preference to non-starchy vegetables, nuts, sweets.
2. Abstinence. There is an opinion that if you give up intimacy for 2-3 months before conceiving a child, a girl will appear. If a married couple practices frequent intercourse, a boy is more likely to be born.
3. Heredity. There is a regularity that a man in whose family boys were more likely to have a son than a daughter and vice versa.

When the fetus has a reproductive system

The genitals of the fetus do not form immediately, however, the sex of the baby is established immediately after the fertilization of the egg, depending on the set of chromosomes. Sex cells develop in the fifth week of the term, and around the end of the first trimester they begin active development, while the sex of the child at this stage cannot be determined by any means. The baby's genitals are formed at about 7 weeks, before that the genitals of the embryo look almost the same.

At the eighth week, the baby's scrotum begins to secrete a sex hormone and a Müllerian duct inhibitor. If the latter are absent, female genital organs are formed. Sexual characteristics become distinguishable by the end of the ninth week. In boys, the penis and scrotum form after 11 weeks, while the testicles remain hidden in the tummy until the third trimester of pregnancy.

What week can you find out the gender of the child

It is possible to determine the sex of the unborn baby using an ultrasound scan at the beginning of the second trimester, but at this time there are often erroneous assumptions. When can you find out the sex of the child with high accuracy of the result? The doctor will be able to determine this reliably no earlier than 4-4.5 months. In this case, you need to know that the male gender is found out more easily than the female. This is due to the fact that in girls in the early stages of development, edema of the genitals occurs, so they can be confused with male ones.

Determination methods

There are several medical methods for diagnosing the sex of a child, each of which helps parents to find out with a high degree of certainty who to expect for the world - a daughter or a son. However, not all of the procedures are safe for the fetus, so some expectant mothers prefer folk omens as a way to determine the sex of the baby before birth. The disadvantage of the latter is inaccuracy.

Sex determination by ultrasound

Ultrasound examination is one of the most reliable and informative diagnostic methods to determine the sex of the child. Conducting scheduled ultrasounds is completely safe and does not cause any harm to the fetus. As a rule, ultrasound diagnostics shows the gender of the child at 11-12 weeks of pregnancy. Nevertheless, at this time, the process of formation of the genital organs of the embryo is still underway, therefore the reliability of the information received is 100%.

An experienced specialist, regardless of the relative accuracy of the determination, will be able to establish the sex of the child by ultrasound. The doctor carefully examines the genital tubercle and may notice the presence of developing testicles in the abdomen of a male embryo. By the 14th week of the term, the errors of the ultrasound results are reduced to a minimum. To determine the sex of the crumbs at this stage, not only an external assessment of organs using ultrasound can be carried out, but also other studies.

Invasive techniques

It is allowed to use such methods of determining the gender of a baby only due to certain circumstances. For example, if the sex of the child depends on whether he inherits a genetic disease from his mother or father. Doctors use the following invasive techniques to determine who will be born:

1. Chorionic biopsy. The essence of the technique for determining the sex of a child is to take the contents of the uterus with a needle through a special probe, which is inserted through the vagina. This method implies a 100% result and is carried out for a period of 10-12 weeks if indicated (the risk of having a child with Down syndrome or with the manifestation of hereditary pathologies).
2. Analysis of amniotic fluid. The procedure for determining the sex of the child is carried out no earlier than 4 months of pregnancy. The doctor punctures the placenta and draws a small amount of amniotic fluid for analysis using a syringe. Like a chorionic biopsy, amniocentesis eliminates error in the result.

By blood test

In what month can you find out the sex of a child using a DNA test? This method is able to establish the sex of the baby at the earliest stages of pregnancy (starting from 6 weeks). Manipulation is carried out by drawing blood from a vein, after which laboratory technicians examine the mother's blood for fragments of the embryo's DNA. The accuracy of the method is 99.999%, however, to carry out the analysis you will have to pay a round sum, since this test is an expensive medical procedure. How long will you have to wait for the result? The answer is provided to parents within 24 hours.

To determine the gender of a child, some parents listen to folk signs. They cannot give an exact answer to the question of who will be born in the family, but they often predict the birth of a girl or boy correctly. The most common signs that help determine the sex of a baby in a short time include the following:

• the appearance of pigmentation and pimples on the face of the expectant mother speaks of carrying a girl;
• with improved skin and the flowering of female beauty, the likelihood of having a son is more likely;
• if a woman is drawn to sweets, a daughter will be born, if she wants to eat more salty, meat, it is worth waiting for her son;
• toxicosis in the early stages helps to determine the bearing of a girl;
• with a more rounded abdomen, a daughter will be born, and a sharp, slightly elongated shape indicates the birth of a son.

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Any couple expecting a child secretly have their own preferences regarding who should be born to them - a boy or a girl. Many couples suggest using special methods for planning the sex of the baby, however, it is not so easy to decide which one is the most effective. In order to do this, you need to clearly understand how the sex of the unborn child is formed, and how conception occurs in general.

It is believed that the sex of the baby is most dependent on the father, since it is determined by which chromosome the sperm that fertilized the egg will have - X (female) or Y (male). However, scientists have found that the likelihood of having a child of one sex or another largely depends on the woman. For example, young mothers are more likely to have sons, while a woman in adulthood is more likely to give birth to a daughter, and it is also slightly more likely that a boy will be born as a result of the first birth, and not a girl.

It is interesting that boys, in principle, are born a little more often than girls - 105 versus 100, however, they more often die in childbirth and in the first year of life, as a result of which the total number of men and women remains approximately the same. It is known that pregnancies in boys occur even more often, but many of them are terminated at different stages.

How is the sex of the unborn child formed?
Information about who the newly conceived child will be, a boy or a girl, is laid immediately after fertilization, and the sex of the baby is determined by which chromosome the sperm that fertilized the egg carried, "male" or "female".

At the first stages of formation, all embryos have only female sexual characteristics. If the egg was fertilized by a sperm that carried information "to the boy", at a certain moment the male Y chromosome begins to act, and the embryo begins to form certain organs and body parts that are characteristic only of boys. Thus, it turns out that it is impossible to influence the sex of the baby after conception, and if the parents want a son or, on the contrary, a daughter more, they should worry about this in advance.

Currently, the most common methods of the unborn child by the date of conception and by following a special, so-called French diet. According to the first method, in order to conceive a girl, you need to have sexual intercourse no later than two to three days before ovulation, and in order to get a son as a result, intercourse must occur either the day before or on the day of ovulation. The basic principle of planning with a diet is to eat a lot of foods containing salt and potassium if they want to have a son more, or calcium and magnesium if the couple is determined to have a daughter. In addition to these methods, there are many recommendations and more or less effective ways to "program" the sex of the baby. However, whichever of these methods the future parents choose, it is important for them to remember that no method gives a 100% guarantee of success, and to be prepared in advance that the gender of the baby born may not coincide with their expectations ...

When planning a pregnancy, every couple sooner or later thinks about which gender they would be more happy with. Many parents-to-be are wondering if it is possible to influence the situation in advance and plan the sex of the baby.

How and when is the sex of the embryo established? Is it possible to interfere with this process?

How is the baby's gender formed?

Scientists have proven that all information about the physiological characteristics of a person is encoded in his DNA. This also applies to data on gender. Information about who the embryo is destined to become - a boy or a girl - is inherent in the genes of the fetus from the very beginning. How is this possible?

The karyotype of a healthy person consists of 46 elements, but its gender is determined by only two of them: the so-called X and Y chromosomes. Moreover, the latter are present only in the cells of men. Belonging to the female sex is encoded by the XX chromosome pair.

From the school biology course, we remember that when a child is conceived, the parental genetic material is "mixed" in a 50:50 ratio. That is, the embryo inherits exactly half of its DNA set from the mother, while the other from the father.

The rule also applies to sex chromosomes. The embryo receives one from each parent. In the case of the mother, this is the X chromosome. There are no others in her eggs. The father, on the other hand, can pass both the X and the Y chromosome to the offspring with equal probability, depending on which sperm with what “charge” reaches the goal. This will ultimately determine the sex of the baby.

When does this happen?

"Recording" of the karyotype of the unborn child begins immediately at the moment of conception of the baby. In other words, the sex of the fetus is predetermined from the first day of pregnancy. However, at this stage, everything is just beginning.

The genitals themselves - female or male - will begin to form in the embryo at a later stage of development. Usually, their rudiments appear no earlier than the fifth week of pregnancy.

At the same time, almost until the end of the second month of gestation, absolutely all embryos develop "according to the female pattern." Specific reproductive organs (penis and scrotum) in future males do not appear earlier than 9-11 weeks of being in the womb. It is at this moment that special hormones and inhibitors are actively synthesized in the body of the embryo, which are necessary for the reduction of the Müllerian duct ("rudiment" of the uterus and fallopian tubes) into the element of the prostate gland with the rudiments of the testicles.

When and in what ways can the sex of the fetus be determined?

Due to the above features of embryonic development, it is almost impossible to find out who will be born - a boy or a girl, at least until mid-pregnancy. Only at a gestation period of 4-4.5 months will the external reproductive organs of the embryo take shape so much that they become distinguishable on an ultrasound scan.

Of course, the doctor will make assumptions about the sex of the fetus during the first ultrasound examination, scheduled for future mothers at the beginning of the second trimester of pregnancy, but the accuracy of his guesses will be far from ideal. When using the 3D scanning method, the reliability of the research results is slightly increased.

Sometimes the specific position of the fetus in the womb makes it impossible to determine the sex of the embryo using ultrasound. In this case, doctors are forced to use alternative research methods:

• amniocentesis;
• chorionobiopsy.

The main disadvantage of both of these methods is their invasiveness (and hence the potential danger to the embryo). At the same time, when it comes to determining the sex of the baby, neither amniocentesis nor chorionobiopsy provide 100% accuracy of the results. Some parents try to find out the sex of the child using non-traditional folk methods:

• According to the ancient Chinese method. In some Asian countries, it is still believed that the gender of a child is formed by a combination of several determining factors (age of the mother, month when conception occurred, etc.). There are voluminous tables that allow you to take into account all these points and get an answer.
• According to the Japanese method. This method is similar to ancient Chinese, with only one difference. The Japanese believe that the sex of the baby is formed in direct proportion to the age and month of birth of both parents.
• By the timing of ovulation. Scientists have found that spermatozoa containing the Y chromosome are, on average, lighter and faster, but less hardy than their "brothers" filled with X. Accordingly, if conception occurred on the day a woman ovulated, chances are high that the goal was reached just by the "high-speed" gamete. If intercourse took place 1-2 days before ovulation, then, most likely, the couple will have a girl.

Is it possible to somehow influence the gender of the child?

Some expectant mothers believe that the formation of the sex of the child can be influenced by observing the following diet in the early stages of pregnancy:

Featured Products	Desired gender of the child
	female	male
beverages	coffee; teas; hot chocolate; cocoa	carbonated drinks; fruit juices
meat	any, but in moderation
a fish	exceptionally fresh (any)	in any form and quantity (excluding caviar)
bird eggs	in any form and quantity, without restrictions	only protein
milk products	fresh milk; sour cream; cottage cheese; cream	excluded
cereals and cereals	any baked goods that do not contain salt and yeast; rice; semolina	only in the form of cookies or biscuits
fresh (not canned) vegetables	potatoes (in moderation); asparagus; eggplant; beet; carrot; onion; cucumbers; pepper; peas; beans	potatoes; beans (white); lentils; peas (pre-dried)
fruits and berries	strawberry; apples; pears; raspberry; pineapples; lemons; grapefruit; watermelons; quince; mango	sweet cherry; apricots; bananas; peaches; dates; oranges (plus dried fruits)

Boy or girl? This question is of great interest to all future parents.

Nowadays, married couples do not always rely on calculations in, but want to know who will be born to them, when it is already possible to determine by ultrasound. So when is an ultrasound most likely to determine the sex of a child?

Physiology of the formation of the sex of the child

The sex of your child at conception is formed by a man, depending on which sperm will fertilize the mother's egg. If it is a sperm with an X chromosome, then a girl will be born, if a sperm with a Y chromosome, then you need to wait for a boy. Naturally, at the moment of conception, no one knows with which sperm the egg is fertilized. Therefore, couples wait until a certain time.

Future dads and mothers are often interested in how accurately you can find out the sex of the baby in the first trimester of its bearing. Recall that fetal genitals begin to form from the sixth week of pregnancy. Then a small tubercle appears in the place of the baby's genitals. Until the ninth week, these tubercles in boys and girls look the same, without noticeable differences due to their small size.

After 11 weeks in boys, the tubercle changes into a penis. At the 13th week of pregnancy, under the influence of the hormone dihydrotestosterone, his intimate organ begins to grow: the penis is stretched. The testicles are in the abdomen at this stage. They descend into the scrotum only at the 7th month of pregnancy. Therefore, on an ultrasound scan, the doctor can suggest what gender the child will be born to. The error at this time is 50%. Therefore, despite the great desire of the parents, when conducting the first ultrasound scan at 12-13 weeks, it is still difficult to accurately determine the gender of your baby.

Very often at this time, swelling of the labia of girls can be mistaken for a male penis. And it also happens that the tightly closed legs of the child simply cover his genitals. Very experienced ultrasound specialists on a good machine can determine the sex of the unborn child at 14 weeks. For this, the angle between the genital tubercle and the back of the baby is measured. Boys have this angle of 300 or more, and girls less than 300.

Sex determination

On the term, we can talk about a more accurate determination of the sex of the child. In this case, the boy is easier for doctors to determine.

The most optimal time to accurately determine the sex of the baby is 20-24 weeks of pregnancy. The fetus during this period is already very mobile, the sex differences between boys and girls are distinguishable. That is why on the second planned ultrasound there is a chance to find out who will be born to you. Why only chances? It often happens that during an ultrasound scan, a child occupies an inconvenient position for diagnosis, as if turning away from the doctor - and it is difficult to determine his gender. This rarely happens. But in most cases, one of the results of the second planned ultrasound will also determine the sex of the child.

There is no need to be upset if your baby "did not allow" to determine his gender. The main thing is that he be healthy. And the future mom and dad can come up with two names, if they want to buy things in neutral colors. Remember that our mothers and grandmothers did not even have the opportunity to know the gender of their unborn child before giving birth. It was a pleasant surprise when he was born.

It should be noted that there is a method for very accurate results for determining the sex of the child. This is a 3D ultrasound examination. It is paid and, as a rule, it is carried out in medical centers.

Alternative (invasive) sex determination methods

Today, medicine has other methods for determining the sex of an unborn child in early pregnancy. These methods are used only under certain circumstances. For example, when the birth of a boy or girl is highly undesirable for medical reasons (genetic diseases). For a period of 7-10 weeks, the sex of the child is determined by a chorionic biopsy. The essence of the technique consists in taking a small portion of its contents from the uterus with a special needle in order to determine the set of fetal chromosomes. The method gives an almost 100% guarantee. The second technique is performed at 16-18 weeks and is called amniocentesis. Through a small puncture, a little amniotic fluid is also taken for the study of the chromosomal composition. The reliability of the method is 99%. Cordocentesis is an invasive method in which blood from the umbilical cord of the fetus is taken for examination. Let us remind once again that doctors resort to these methods only in exceptional cases.

In most pregnancies, it is possible to accurately determine the gender of the child closer to, on the second planned ultrasound, after the expectant mother first felt the movements of her baby. And whoever the ultrasound predicted for you, do not be discouraged. The main thing is a healthy and strong child. And you will give birth to a sister or brother to him next time.

Especially for Elena TOLOCHIK