ask: Can skipping breakfast help conceive a baby girl?
In a recent study conducted in England where 740 newly pregnant British women participated showed that women who ate breakfast cereal gave birth to more boys, while the women who skipped breakfast gave birth to more girls. It was also shown that the women who ate more total calories also delivered more boys, even though the overall female-to-male birth ratio among the participants in the study was close to 50/50.
The women in the study completed a detailed food-frequency questionnaire during their first pregnancy exam and also well into their pregnancy, and they were asked to keep a detailed food journal for a week around the time of their fourth month into pregnancy. The women were also asked to recall their dietary habits during the year prior to conception.
Using the data gathered, the researchers determined that the women who ate the most calories around the time of conception were delivering more boys, with approximately 56 percent giving birth to male infants, compared with the 45 percent of the women who ate the fewest calories prior to conception. Mathews stated that of those women who reported eating breakfast cereal every morning, 59 percent of them gave birth to boys compared with the 43 percent of the women who reported rarely or never eating cereal for breakfast.
So, should a woman who wants her next child to be a girl skip breakfast a few weeks or months prior to conception? Isn't breakfast the most important meal of the day?
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This has got to be one of the more crazy studies I've ever heard. LOL. Only in England... (did they say where in England this was done? And who the heck would pay for this kind of study??)
January 21, 2009 - 12:59pmThis Comment
Crazy is right! Ha! Ha!
I actually have personal experience with the "Choose the sex of your baby" topic.
My daughter, Kamryn, is the only girl in 30 years on both sides.
It's all about ovulation vs timing of intercourse.
Since male sperm is smaller, swims faster, but only lives for about 24 hours, it makes sense to know when you ovulate. Female sperm is larger, slower, but can live up to four days or in the case of my daughter ...6 days (which explains her persistent and stubborn personality!)
There are many ways to learn about ovulation. Ovulation kits, basil temp and cervical mucus. For me the best, most accurate and cheapest was cervical mucus. When your CM looks like egg whites you are ovulating. I kept a chart for a few months so I could learn the changes in my CM. That way I could predict when to try. I would have intercourse from the end of my period to two days before my predicted ovulation day. Frequency of intercourse helps too because it lowers the sperm count and that offers up more girls. It worked! Kamryn is my proof.
The book I used was "How to Choose the Sex of your Baby" by Landrum Shettles.
So eat breakfast all of you wanting a girl...you'll need the energy for all of the "trying" you will be doing!
January 21, 2009 - 2:23pmThanks for the info, Cyndi!
The Shettles method is controversial and is the subject of much internet chat room debate but actually has about a 65% success rate. We were not using that method (or any other) but by mere coincidence, we used it unknowingly and if the method is correct, we should have had a girl. And we had...a girl!
As for as the breakfast issue - not buying it either. The only things skipping breakfast will do for you is make you grumpy and, ironically, gain weight.
January 21, 2009 - 2:42pmCyndi, this is such interesting and great info. And it totally makes sense. (The breakfast thing, not so much.) Thanks so much for sharing it!!
January 21, 2009 - 4:51pmHere is more information on the British study on how Mom's diet (i.e breakfast) may influence baby's gender http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24262928/
January 22, 2009 - 10:59pmLooks like possibly Dr. Shettles research, done 40 years ago, made some inappropriate assumptions...
http://www.in-gender.com/CS/blogs/gender_selection_news/archive/2006/01/...
April 26, 2009 - 7:22am