This is not really related to gender prediction but I just wanted to get it out there. If you live in California, on November 4th you will, hopefully, go and cast the vote on 11 propositions and for the president. Vote “No” on proposition 8. This proposition contains a constitutional amendment that will redefine a marriage as the union between man and woman. Ask yourself, what is wrong if two dudes or ladies want to get married and enjoy all the “perks” that come with it? And don’t believe those commercials about kids learning about marriage. Nobody teaches kids about marriage in schools. Think back when you were a kid, did you learn about marriage from school or from your parents? I bet your parents taught you.
Anyways, enjoy exersicing your constitutional rights and Vote!
This post is not really about gender prediction, but something I have read recently.
According to a study published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, having fan on during sleep reduces risk of SIDS by 72 percent. That is a LARGE precentage. They interviewed parents whose babies died of SIDS and parents whose babies did not die, and determined that, among other factors such as sleeping position, surface, pacifier use, the fan use plays a large role in preventing SIDS.
The scientists explain that high concentration of carbon dioxide (the gas humans exhale) accumulates in bedding and other materials, can contribute to SIDS. Babies’ immature lungs cannot deal with high amounts of the gas. Fans improve air circulation and prevent accumulation of carbon dioxide.
Interesting stuff. Read more here
Intersting piece of information I came across recently. Every fetus begins life as female. Crazy, isn’t? I did not believe it myself, but after a quick research I came across enough scientific evidence confirming this fact.
As I explained before, mother has two female chromosomes (XX), while father has one male and one female (XY). With such obundance of female chromosomes, no wonder a fetus starts out as female.
Let’s talk a little about something else rather than gender prediction. The ratio between available, heterosexual boys and girls. I’d like to emphasize “heterosexual” because I’m mainly focused on procreation.
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Gender Ratio
Can expectant mothers use their intuition to find out baby’s gender? According to a study conducted by Dr. Shamas and University of Arizona, mothers guess the correct gender 70% of the time. Not exactly reliable method considering the worst they can do is 50%. Quote:
MOTHER KNOWS BEST: Expectant mothers can use the power of intuition to learn the sex of their unborn babies, says a University of Arizona study. Women who claimed to have an intuition about the gender of their child made the right choice 70% of the time. A survey of college students also found 80% believe their mothers are more intuitive than their fathers.
But it’s not much worse than other gender prediction methods such as Chinese chart or old wife’s tale.
Interesting fact, according to web page hosted by students at Harvard University, one of the sites that’s blocked in Saudi Arabia is online gender predictor. Why? I can only speculate. In some cultures babies of one gender (for example boys) are preferred over the opposite gender.
Interesting research paper, that might not be relevant to baby gender prediction, describes a technique to determine a gender based on the iris (eye) scan.
Vince Thomas, et. al. from University of Notre Dame published a paper Learning to predict gender from iris images:
Employing decision tree learning made it possible to develop
gender classification models that can reach accuracies
close to 80%. This is a notable result as it has previously been
an unchartered territory.
Granted, it’s impossible to scan baby’s iris while in womb, so this method cannot be used by baby gender prediction. Nonetheless, interesting paper.
When I was pregnant with my first child I was always getting comments from strangers that it is a boy. Apparently I was carrying my Daughter in front, and according to some, this is a sure sign of a boy. Well, guess what, I gave birth to a girl, just like ultrasound promised. So, this is again proves that gender prediction methods are less than perfect. However, in my case the Baby Gender Predictor was correct.
So I asked a question a while back on one of the forums about gender prediction. And I guess I posted to the wrong forum or something, but I got some backlash from women that are trying to get pregnant but cannot for one reason or another. I guess they don’t care about gender, and I can understand that.
When hearing stories about women trying to get pregnant for months or even years, I was always wondering, does birth control pills has anything to do with it? I don’t mean to gloat in my own success, but I got pregnant on the first try, literally, and I’ve never used birth control pills. As soon as my hubby stop pulling out (he he) I got knocked up. I haven’t looked up any studies but is it possible that birth control affects child bearing?
The all important ultrasound… Most of us, I’m sure, place great faith into the accuracy of the ultrasound in gender prediction. However this trust is somewhat misplaced. First of all, the ultrasound is not 100% accurate. According to my doctor, by 14th week the ultrasound is about 90% accurate with most errors made mistakenly identifying boy as a girl. However, things like fetus position and nurse’s skills affect the accuracy of ultrasound.
The important thing to realize that, unless DNA test is done, there is no sure 100% way to determine baby’s gender.
