Pregnancy Post- Ring test for gender

Okay, the last gender predictor didn't do too well. Are you ladies up for another?

This is a strange one, so get ready. A few years ago my friend introduced me to a technique for not just determining the gender of the baby you're pregnant with, but knowing the gender of all your kids. I generally don't like voo-doo stuff, if I don't know where the power comes from, it freaks me out. This technique told me that I would have two boys, a girl, and then stopped. I knew I would have more than 3 kids, so I disregarded it as nonsense. The crazy thing is, it told me the same thing every time I tried.

On my babycenter birth board, someone brought up this old ring-on-a-string test that I had tried four years ago. My first thought was, well that didn't work for me, I'm pregnant with my fourth and my third is definitely not a girl. But I decided to read on. Surprisingly there are four pages of people posting and I've only seen one that it didn't work for. One person posted saying, that significant life events could change the prediction of your children, which could explain why mine was wrong. Here is a link to the page on babycenter. The interesting thing about these great results is that they are only proven accurate for the past. My friend suggested that maybe our bodies have the capability to somehow affect the test because we already know what gender we've had. I don't know how it works, but I decided it was worth doing a Preggot test on it. I tried it first.

Here's how you do it:
Get a ring, and put it on a string. Hold the ends of the string with one hand, and put out the other hand palm up. (You must be sitting up with your hand out in front of you... you don't want your hand over your stomach)
Make sure the string isn't twisted so the ring isn't spinning.
Hold the ring at the level of your hand, just to the side of your hand and dip it below your hand level three times, then hold it above the center of your palm and wait until it has decided a pattern.

IF it is swinging back and forth, it is indicating boy, IF it is swinging in circles it is indicating girl.

Once it has indicated the gender, dip the ring on the side of your hand three more times and try again. Repeat until you dip the ring and it doesn't swing over your hand, that means it has indicated all the children you will have.

Note: This does include miscarriages. The strange thing is, for my miscarriage it never picked a gender.

Note2: I tried this in a reclined position (okay, okay, I was in the bath!) so my hand was over my belly. It wouldn't stop swinging in circles. There also is a test that you can do when you are already pregnant where you hold the ring over your belly and it will tell you the gender of that particular child. As soon as I sat up and put my hand out in front of me, it was neutral. Weird stuff!

So four years later I tried the test again, and got totally different results. Here is what I got:
#1 boy
#2- miscarriage, undecided- it circled then swung then circled, or something like that
#3 boy
#4 boy
#5 girl
#6 girl
I stopped there. I didn't want to know if there were any more children for me, I can't imagine being pregnant again, it makes me sicker just thinking about it! I'll deal with that later.

So it was right about my three boys, and if this one really is a girl, then it was right! I haven't tried it again yet, but when I did it four years ago it gave me the same result every time.

Try it! And please post your results to tell me if it was accurate for you so far. But PLEASE don't rely on the information about your future children, it was very wrong for me.

Another Gender Predictor

http://www.babygendertool.com/baby-gender-test.aspx

It was right for 2/3 of my kids. How did it do for you?

The Intelligender winner is....

I used an online random number generator at random.org. It gave me 21. Well, that is attack of the mouse. You won another one of my contests, you must be very lucky! I can't believe it! The cool thing is, she knows what she's having already, so it will be fun to know instantly if it was right for her.

Thanks to all the others who entered, sorry you didn't win. There will be more giveaways though, so come back!

Intelligender Test- giveaway

Today was the big day for the Intelligender test which can be purchased by clicking here and paying $34.95 plus $2.00 shipping. If indeed it is accurate, then $34.95 isn't too much money to pay to know the gender of your child as early as 10 weeks into pregnancy!

I copied this off of their website to show how accurate they claim it is:

"In laboratory tests, IntelliGender's G.P.T. was 90% accurate. Since our inception in November 2006, however, our real world results are tracking at 82%. Factors which could affect the accuracy include: failing to use first morning's urine, not following instructions provided in the kit and diluted urine from drinking excessive liquid within 3 hours of performing the test."

This test has been around for a few of my pregnancies, but I never could justify buying it until now. Preggot made it worthwhile to buy, to test it out for all the rest of you.

The test is simple, it consists of a syringe, a cup for the urine sample, and the test cup which has a small amount of powder in it. Collect first morning urine, FMU, in the cup. Measure 20 ml of urine into the syringe. Insert syringe into test and add all 20 ml of urine. Swirl for 10 seconds and wait 5-10 minutes to see the result. If the test is orange or yellow, it is a girl. If it turns brown or green it is a boy. On one side it says boy and shows you the color, and if you flip it around it says girl and shows you the color. Here is how I did.

The box and it's contents


After 10 minutes......

It doesn't match the boy results......


Flip it around and it matches the girl results perfectly!


So it looks like Intelligender thinks I'm having a girl. Common Intelligender, do you REALLY think it's possible for me to have a girl after 3 boys?!? I can't wait to find out!

So I will be giving away the other test that they sent me. I would prefer only pregnant women entering this contest so you can report on it's accuracy for you as well. It doesn't matter what stage of pregnancy you are in, even if you already know the gender of your baby it will tell us instantly how accurate it was for you! Leave a comment and on Monday I'll pick the winner.

Tomorrow is the day!- Intelligender

I got my intelligender test in the mail today. It requires first morning urine (FMU) so tomorrow is the day. Get ready all! And on tomorrow's post, all those who want to be included in the giveaway need to leave a comment.

Until tomorrow....

Bad News and Good News

The bad news... My intelligender test got lost in the shipping process, so I won't get it until later this week.

The good news... They have GREAT customer service and they are sending me two tests since they messed up. I'll use one to document on Preggot, and the other one will be a giveaway. Cool huh! Yay for good customer service!

Pregnancy Post- The Shettles Method... does it work?

A recent poll found that only 17% of women DON'T have a preference on the gender of their baby. I can honestly say I have never been one of that 17%. Only with my second child did I have a very strong preference, but with the first and the last I had a slight girl preference (I didn't know if a boy was capable of being a good oldest child. I've since learned that my boy makes a fantastic oldest child. And I wouldn't mind this one being a girl.) With my third child I had a slight boy preference. My second absolutely HAD to be a boy, I just wanted to have my two little boys, and I'm sure glad I do. So I have always had a preference, and I know some people who have VERY strong preferences and are very disappointed if they don't achieve the desired gender.

Many people talk about the "timing" of your conception and how that can determine the sex of your baby. This comes from Dr. Landrum Shettles who claimed a 75% to 90% success rate for his simple, at-home method, which advises how to time intercourse to conceive a boy or a girl. He sold millions of books, and many more people believe in his theories. But how does this theory actually perform? I'm going to share an actual study with 700 people.

First of all, what is the Shettles method? Shettles theorized that the two different types of sperm, X-chromosome-bearing sperm and Y-chromosome-bearing sperm, had different properties.

Y-Bearing Sperm
(Male-Producing)

• Smaller, round-headed
• Faster
• More fragile, shorter-lived

X-Bearing Sperm
(Female-Producing)

• Larger, oval-headed
• Slower
• More resilient, longer-lived

Shettles hoped that these properties could be used to choose a baby's sex.

• Under ideal conditions, the Y-sperm's faster speed should prevail, winning the race to the egg and conceiving a boy.
• Under less than ideal conditions, fewer of the fragile Y-sperm will survive. The X-sperm's resiliance and staying power should win the day, conceiving a girl.

Dr. Shettles believed that correctly timing intercourse was the most important factor in choosing to conceive a boy or girl. This means you must learn to detect when you ovulate, and spend a few cycles practicing until you are not only able to determine when ovulation has occurred, but to predict when it is about to occur.

Generally, the rule of thumb that people go by is that a 2-3 day cutoff of intercourse before ovulation should give you a girl. Intercourse ON the day of ovulation, and as close to ovulation as possible would give you a boy. Some people even throw in a vinegar douche to increase acidity for a girl, or a baking soda douche to increase alkalinity for a boy. It HAS been scientifically proven that X-sperm thrive under acidic conditions and Y-Sperm thrive under alkaline conditions.

If you would like any more information on the Shettles Method, just google it and you will find thousands of websites discussing it.

How did it measure up in an actual study. It's easy to write a book and claim whatever statistics you want in it, but how did it do in real life? There is a website that I found years ago that is fascinating. It is www.in-gender.com. They surveyed 700 people on how the Shettles Method worked for them. Here is their scorecard that I copied from their site.

	Claimed	Actual	Grade
Shettles for a GIRL	75%	65%	C-
Comments: Intercourse 3 days before ovulation does show a noticeable increase over the natural odds of about 50%. However, intercourse on other days (2 or 4 days) before ovulation does not show any greater chance of having a girl.
Shettles for a BOY	80%	60%	D
Comments: Intercourse on the day of ovulation increases the chance of a boy somewhat.
Fertility for a GIRL			D
Comments: All Shettles recommendations for conceiving a girl hamper fertility, making it harder to get pregnant at all. Attempting Shettles for a girl may take many more cycles to get pregnant, or not at all.
Fertility for a BOY			A+
Comments: All Shettles recommendations for conceiving a boy lead to optimum fertility. Following Shettles for a boy should lead to pregnancy as soon as possible (assuming there are no fertility problems).

So you can see from their scorecard that the Shettles Method does increase your chances of conceiving, but not dramatically. If you want to increase your chances of a certain gender more dramatically, visit In-Gender and check out some of their other techniques. It's amazing what people will do, maybe some day I'll be desperate enough to do some of these things.

Babylegs

For those who are wondering what they are....
They can be found here, just click!

So we seem to be pretty divided on whether or not babylegs are acceptable for boys. So basically, if I ever did put babylegs on my boy, I should do it in the privacy of my own home! Which is really what I would do anyway. I don't own any, but I think it might be nice to have easy access to diapers, since I am changing them all day long.

Thanks for voting in the poll! I think it's so fun to see everyone's opinions. Anyone have a topic that they want to see polled? Leave a comment.

Sorry

Sorry about the coupon code. It was working earlier, it's too bad that they terminated it. Sorry to those who tried to use them. I have another good site to post for shoes, I'll post it soon.

And the winner is....

I drew out the number 11! Which is Viv! Congratulations, and I'll send you a super cute nursing apron if you email me your address. 2boysrus@gmail.com

Sorry to those who didn't win. I do think I'll follow Carrie's advice and sell them on here. I'm going to look around and see how much people charge for them, I plan on selling them for less than everyone else.

Last call for the giveaway

I will complete the drawing tomorrow, so last call if you want to leave a comment and be included in the drawing for the giveaway.

And an upcoming post is going to be a test for the "Intelligender" test. Have any of you heard of it before? It is a urine test that supposedly can tell you the gender of your baby as early as 10 weeks. I ordered one today, and I'm going to document my experience with in on Preggot. If anyone else is pregnant and wants to try it, please share your results on here. I'm excited! I don't hold a lot of faith in the results, but it will be fun to try. I'm going to try to get a group together on my babycenter birth board so we can have some real statistics. I'll post them on here later, of course it will be awhile since none of us will really know what gender we are having for quite a few more weeks.

And of course, we'll have to compare the results to the drano pee test and see if it's the same kind of thing. But I can' t do the drano pee test until I'm 16 weeks. The drano pee test was wrong for me last time, so I have no faith in that test!

(Make sure to check out the latest poll)

Giveaway

Leave a comment, and I will do a drawing for a free (and super-cute I might add) nursing apron. It will be a different fabric than the one pictured above (Darn-it, they don't carry that one any more), but promised to be a design anyone would love.

These things are awesome, you'll love having one!

All are welcome, please leave a comment!

Motherhood Tip- Learning to Read

Right Now I am teaching my four year old to read. I just thought I would pass on the tip that has worked really well for me. It is a book called, "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons." It is a structured curriculum that tells you exactly what to say, and how to teach your child to read. It is working wonders with my son, and it is easy for me to do. Having a curriculum has been the only thing that has made this task less overwhelming for me.

My dear friend also gave me this awesome website to use. My son enjoyed this website, and navigated himself around it for a whole hour yesterday! That's a huge success in my opinion! The website is www.starfall.com. It's not really a curriculum, so it would definitely need a plan of action if it was the only resource used in teaching a child to read. I'll try to contact her and find out how she uses it.

If any one else has any techniques that they used and they would like to share, please leave a comment. As mothers, we need all the help we can get, don't we?

I'M PREGNANT!

It's official, I'm pregnant. Around 9 weeks. And I'm just starting to see light from this black hole I've been stuck in for the last 3 weeks. I think early pregnancy is SO hard! I don't associate any of the first trimester misery with the baby. The baby comes months later, and I can't see or feel this baby, nor do I even know if it's a he or she! (Although it's safe to assume it's a he with my track record.) So I have a hard time admitting that a baby is worth the sickness right now, even though I'm always very pleased with my babies later on. And when my baby is born, it will be very easy for me to see the blessing that it was to experience the joy of pregnancy. And I'll be silly enough to forget all the pain and do it again! In the meantime... I survive... one day at a time......that's all I try to do.

Here are some things that have helped me survive these last few weeks:

1. Let dh (dear husband) do everything! I'm not kidding. I lay on the couch "busy" as I create life, and he does everything else. It's only fair.
2. Zofran- It's generic and cheap now. It helps me less than it helps other people, but I still think it's a good thing.
3. Phenergan- Even cheaper and easier to get than Zofran. Really helps with nausea. Folks complain that it makes them sleepy. I personally would rather sleep than face the reality of the first trimester. The only way they could improve on Phenergan is to make it last a few weeks at a time so I could "hibernate." I think I'd like that! Better yet, wake me on my due date wouldya?
4. Caffeine Free Pepsi- Did you know that Coca-cola was created as a good tasting medicine and then people liked it enough to drink? I don't know if that's true, but my sista told me it is. Whatever the case, cola syrup is soothing to the stomach. I'm not a caffeine drinker, so the caffeine free version suits me fine. I've been through two 24 packs of these, but my two year old has helped me out :)
5. Movie and Books- In past pregnancies I could escape into the bath for hours, and feel pretty good. That hasn't worked this time. My escape has been into movies and books. For two hours, if the movie is good enough, I find myself in a world of bank robberies or space adventures, and forget about how rotten I feel.
6. Naps, naps, and ummmm more naps? I have slept SO much with this pregnancy. It's amazing that I can sleep all day AND all night. I really believe that sleep is key in pregnancy.
7. I know I've said this before, but my mom taught me that when things were going down they weren't coming up. Candy, pretzels, goldfishies, whatever. I've kept things going down as much as possible. And consequently, our scale is now five pounds heavy. Dang scale.

So now for the fun part of this pregnancy: I got pregnant before I even tried! I went to the doctor to get some fertility drugs, and he told me to take a pregnancy test before I took the pills. It showed up positive! So I call in to tell them I'm pregnant and they ask me for the first date of my LMP las menstrual period..... 2/13/2007. Yes, I'm 19 months pregnant! No, actually I never had a period after my baby was born. I caught the very first egg! Me, the control freak, obsessive compulsive, usually finds out I'm pregnant the very first day anyone could humanly possibly find out, was almost 6 weeks along before I found out I was pregnant. It was pretty fun!

You see, right after I quit nursing I ordered a 50-pack of OPKs from saveontests.com. But for some reason they sent them to my old address. It took me a few weeks to get them. Well, I guess I didn't need those. So now they will be up for grabs as a giveaway. Stay tuned for that. And don't worry, even if you aren't ready to get pregnant now, they don't expire any time soon, so they will last until you need them.