Will having sex more often affect the sex of the baby if I get pregnant?
People who email me often confess that when trying to get pregnant, they will have sex as much as possible during their fertility cycle to have the best chance of conceiving. Some of them ask if this method will affect or influence the sex of their baby. Can. I will explain why in the next article.
If you don’t care what gender you get, having sex often when trying to conceive is a decent idea: The reasoning behind this method makes perfect sense. You only have a small window of time each month when you can actually get pregnant. Therefore, your possibilities are already limited. Every time you have sex, more sperm is released, which creates more chances for you to get pregnant. It only makes sense that you want to give yourself as many chances for success as possible. Having sex as often as possible is one way to do it.
However, if you want to choose the sex of your baby, timing is very important. When you’re just having sex anytime you feel like it, then you take this careful timing out of the equation and you could be leaving the gender of your baby up to mother nature or chance.
Why the timing of intercourse affects whether you conceive a boy or a girl: To make a relatively long and complicated story more simplistic and short, having sex before ovulation favors the conception of a girl, while having sex after the release of the egg (ovulation) increases the chances of having a boy. But, if you’re just trying to conceive without considering where you are in her ovulation cycle, then you’re potentially ignoring or missing a very important variable.
Yes, choosing your baby’s gender often means having less sex during your ovulation cycle. And yes, this means fewer sperm chromosomes, which means less chance of success. But honestly, trying every single day of your cycle can be overkill. If you know exactly when you ovulate and plan accordingly, then you still have decent, very specific odds. Whether or not you agree to this method really depends on how important choosing the gender of your baby is to you. Of course, for this method to work, you need a firm grip on your ovulation day. I highly recommend a good predictor that is used regularly so you know exactly when the time is right.
When (or how often) you have sex isn’t the only variable that influences the sex of your baby: Timing is a big issue in gender selection, but it’s not the only one. How you have sex is just as important as when or how often you have it. What I mean is that the positions you use can also be important. Deeper penetration will help along the Y sperm which favors the male baby. What you want for sperm X is a superficial penetration if you are looking for a girl.
The last thing you want to look at is your vaginal fluid and vaginal environment and whether it is acidic or alkaline. You want it to be acidic if you’re trying to have a daughter and alkaline if you’re trying to have a son. There are scientific and specific reasons for this, but this is the short version. So if your method has been to have frequent intercourse when you were trying to get pregnant, there is nothing wrong with that if you really have no preference as to whether you end up with a boy or a girl. But, if you prefer one gender over another, your sexual frequency should reflect this.