Whether this is your first baby or your third, you may have your heart set on having a baby boy.  Most of the time, you will have a 50 / 50 chance of that happening.  

If you follow some of the suggestions below, you may be able to boost the possibility of having a boy beyond the 50% mark.

How Your Baby's Gender is Determined

The chromosomes determine the sex of your baby from his mother (her egg) and father (his sperm). The mother's genetic contribution is a 2 X chromosomes (XX). The father supplies an X chromosome and a Y chromosome.

For you to have a baby boy,  the mother provides an X chromosome, and the father donates one of his x chromosomes. Male children will typically have the same chromosome pair as his father, XY. All this happens automatically, and you usually don't have much control in how the chromosomes combine.  

 

 

 

If you only have two possible genders that are available, statistically, your chance of having a boy is 50%, sort of like a coin toss. Depending on how much money you have, your choices would be a bit limited.  

You significantly raise your chances of conceiving a baby of your gender preference, but the path will not be cheap or easy and involves many fertility specialists.    

We will cover those options below but will start with the most common and least expensive ways you can try to influence the gender of your baby to be.  

Understanding the Shettles Method for Gender Selection

For over two decades, countless couples have relied upon the Shettles Method to influence the sex of their baby. When used properly, the Shettles method claims a success rate between 75 and 90 percent in conceiving the desired gender.

Throughout his book, Dr. Landrum Shettles gives couples techniques to promote the conception of a boy. While the basic outline of the method is below, Dr. Shettles’ book is much more thorough.

The Shettles Method is premised on the idea that boy sperm is smaller in size and less robust but are quicker than girl sperm. (The medical community has refuted the premise that the male sperm is faster since Shettles published his work.) The recommendations below derive from Shettles' understanding.

Timing Sex Close to Ovulation

There are three primary ways to time your ovulation correctly, including:

• Cervical Mucus Charting - Charting cervical mucus daily is essential to track ovulation. Before ovulating, cervical mucus will be elastic and much more watery than usual, resembling raw egg whites. You should chart your cervical mucus for more than a month to increase your chances of predicting ovulation correctly.
• Charting Your Basal Body Temperature (BBT) - When used in conjunction with charting your cervical mucus, you can significantly increase your chances of having a boy. To chart your BBT, you need a basal thermometer. You will use this thermometer each morning directly after waking up and before doing anything else. Your body temperature will increase after ovulation. Because you’re looking to know when ovulation occurs, it’s essential to chart this for a few months before you begin trying to get pregnant. This will help you determine the right times to have intercourse.
• Ovulation Predictor Kits - One final way pinpoint when you will ovulate is by using ovulation predictor kits. The kits are designed to measure when luteinizing hormone, or LH, has been released. This is important because it shows you when ovulation is about to occur. Testing should ideally happen twice daily to best determine the time that this happens. The best times to test are once between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. and once between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. Once you get a positive result, ovulation will occur about 24- 36  hours later.

 

Timing Intercourse and its Frequency

As was mentioned above, the best time to have intercourse if you want a baby boy is no more than 24 hours before ovulation and no later than 12 hours after ovulation has occurred.

Boy sperm will reach the egg more quickly near ovulation because the cervical mucus becomes slippery and less acidic, providing a favorable environment for the boy sperm's survival.  

Whelan Method for Gender Prediction

In her book, Boy Or Girl?, Dr. Whelan suggests that you have sex 4 to 6 days before you ovulate, to conceive a male baby.

To determine when you will be ovulating, she suggests that you chart your BBT temperatures for several months before trying to conceive. The data collected during this time will help you pinpoint when your temperature typically rises about .5 degree - an indication of when you have ovulated.

Once you know when you are ovulating, you can calculate backward to help you have sex at the appropriate time to have sex to get pregnant with a boy.

 

For both the Shettles method and Dr. Whelan's method, reading the books is vital, so you understand the steps involved in order to conceive a child of the desired sex.

 

These methods are not guaranteeing that you will have a boy. Dr. Shettles method claims an 80-90% success rate, and Whelan's approach has a claimed success rate of 65% when trying to conceive a boy baby. All the methods appear to do is increase your chances of having a boy, so try the one that seems the best to you.

Other Gender Selection Tools

You can also try other methods to increase your chances beyond the 50% average that is usually there. They have the same sort of success rate as the books above, but they give you more alternatives to try and sway the gender game in your favor.

Chinese Gender Chart

This chart is supposedly an ancient Chinese way of helping you have the baby of your preferred gender. The chart is rumored to have been found in a Chinese tomb over 700 years ago. The Labor of Love has two versions of this chart that you can try. Based on the polling of the people who tried them out, the average accuracy rate is about 65%.

Using an Ovulation Calendar

Babyhopes has a free ovulation calculator that provides guidelines as to when to have sex if you are trying to have a boy. You will need to know how long your cycles are and when your last period arrived to use this effectively.

The Big "O" - Orgasm

Orgasms during intercourse should be embraced when trying to conceive a boy because the vaginal environment will become more alkaline following the orgasm, a fact that is favorable to the boy sperm. Additionally, an orgasm will help the boy sperm move up into the cervix and toward the ovum.  

Conceiving a Boy Can Have a High Success Rate - For a High Cost

If you are undergoing infertility treatments which include an IUI or IVF, you can also add preimplantation genetic testing of the embryos. This testing typically checks for chromosomal and genetic disorders, but the sex of the embryos can also be determined.  

Depending on your doctor and clinic, you may be able to say that you only want male embryos transferred.   This genetic testing is almost 100% accurate in determining gender. Due to ethical reasons, you may have to shop around to find a practice that is okay with this.

There are a couple of potential issues with using these procedures to make sure you have a baby boy. Cost is a significant barrier for most people.  The price for the IVF with the added genetic testing can run upwards of $20,000.  

In addition to the cost, you will have to subject yourself to all sorts of poking and prodding.  To harvest your eggs for the procedure, you will have to take fertility drugs to get them ready.  The medications can have an unpleasant side effect. The egg retrieval can be painful as well.

In addition to these, you might have a problem finding doctors/practices that are willing to allow gender selection like this. Using assisted reproductive technology (ART) to select the gender of your baby is currently a very hot topic with supporters both for and against using assisted reproductive technology (ART) to choose the gender of your baby.