Tiffany Raiford
Finding out you are pregnant is one of the most exciting moments of your life; but it’s finding out the gender of your unborn child that’s really an amazing feeling. It’s not quite as amazing as giving birth and holding your baby for the first time, but since you cannot control when that happens, you might have to find some creative ways to go ahead and make use of your time (you do have 9 months, you know). Pregnancy can pass by in a blur, or it can feel as if time has all but stopped. When I was pregnant with our first, it felt as if time stopped from day one. Of course, it did not help that our daughter was due the last day of July and we live in Florida. I was hot and miserable, and it wasn’t fun. My second and third pregnancies FLEW by, however. I was due with our second the last week of March and our twins at the end of April. The holidays and the lack of overwhelming heat made things go by so much faster the second and third time around.
However, that last month of pregnancy is the worst. Both my older girls decided they were bored and ready to come a week before my due date, and I did not hate that. I prayed daily, however, that the twins would cook a bit longer, but they were a month early (thankfully healthy, but small with a few respiratory issues that were easily fixed during their week in the NICU). Those last few days are endless, and that means you need something to focus on. For me, it was decorating nurseries and shopping for baby clothes. That’s something that was made much more fun by the fact that I knew what I was having. But you don’t typically find out until about halfway through your pregnancy what you are having. So if you’re looking to know sooner, you might want to know if there is some sort of gender predictor you can try. Well, I’ve tried them all for fun and I can tell you the best ones and the guaranteed way to know what gender your baby will be. I’ll start with the most accurate and work my way to the least accurate. The good news is that they’re all at least 50% accurate every single time.
Give Birth
It’s a scientific fact that you will know for certain what gender your baby really is when you give birth. In fact, it’s the only proven way to predict the gender of your baby. Giving birth is a 100% accurate way to know if you are having a little boy or a little girl. Good luck.
Have an Ultrasound
Unfortunately, this is not always correct. Some people go in too soon, some people make mistakes and others just have uncooperative babies. But it is a good way to learn what you might be having. I have three girls and a boy (my last two are boy/girl twins) and my ultrasounds were correct each and every time we had one. But for others, this is not always the case. Some are mistaken up until birth, providing parents with incorrect information.
3D Ultrasound
A 3D ultrasound is one that many people choose to get since you can get one before your doctor will schedule one. For a nominal fee, you can get an ultrasound like this and make sure you are able to see your baby and potentially find out the sex earlier than your doctor might tell you otherwise. It’s a better shot that some of the other methods, but not always correct.
Use the Gender Predictor Test
This is a test you can buy in the pharmacy, and use it like a pregnancy test. It’s 50% accurate all the time. I considered using one when I was pregnant with the twins, and I do wish I would have. I would have loved to have known how it would have turned out since I did not know at that point I was pregnant with twins, and I was carrying one of each gender.
Use the Baby’s Heart Beat
This is a good indicator, at least in my opinion. For each of my pregnancies (save for the 3rd when we had twins and didn’t know it until 18 weeks along even though we heard the heart beat several times before), it was accurate. There is a saying that the higher the heart rate means a girl, and lower means a boy. When I was pregnant with the twins and we finally found out about it, we did find out that our little girl – whose heart beat we’d been hearing all along – was much faster than our little boy.
Look at How You are Carrying
There is another saying that the lower you carry, the more likely you are to have a boy. When I was carrying the girls, everyone told me I was carrying girls. They were very high. With the twins, everyone told me I was having twins long before we knew it was the truth. I was like a massive beach ball in the middle and tiny everywhere else. It seems people can look at you and tell.
Look at What you are Craving
There is widespread belief that if you are carrying a girl, you will be killing yourself for sweets. If it’s a boy, you’ll want salty. I can say this is the truth – at least for me. I wanted chocolate all the time with my girls. With the twins, however, I craved a salty, delicious Publix sub every single day followed by big Reese’s peanut butter cups that had been in the freezer long enough to get really cold. So I’d say that was accurate, too.
The Drano Method
I’m not sure I’d use this one. No, I am sure I would not use this one. I have four kids and I never used Drano to tell if I was having a boy or girl. But, if you want to do it, there is a 50% chance that the results will be correct. What you do is urinate in a cup and add a bit of Drano – approximately a tablespoon – to the mixture. If it turns green, you are allegedly having a girl. If the color is blue, you are allegedly having a boy. Of course, pregnant women should not play with cleaning products, so ask an innocent bystander – such as your husband – to play with your cup of urine for a 50% chance that you might be accurate. That’s true love right there.
Take an Online Quiz
If it’s on the internet, it’s true, right? Of course! So why not head over to a baby website and take a quiz that will tell you based on your answers to their questions whether or not your baby is a girl or a boy? It has to be at least right half the time.
Guess
If you want another really great gender predictor just as accurate as 9 out of 10 of the above predictors, go ahead and just guess. You have a 50% shot. I was right almost half the time, in fact. With our first, I had a very motherly instinct that I was carrying a girl. In fact, I knew so matter-of-factly that we would welcome a girl, I bought all kinds of girl decorations before we even found out that we were, indeed, having a girl. The second time around, I was positive it was a boy. I was so incorrect. Well, she’s very tomboy-like, so I could be kind of right.
The third time, I KNEW that I was having a boy. I knew it so much that I also went out and bought entirely too many boy things before we ever found out. I was half right that time, as we found out at 18 weeks that we were having a boy. And a girl. At the same time. That was shocking.
Photo by Clemens Bilan/Getty Images
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