Is Gender Selection For Us or Just for Fun?

When we adopted our son, we thought that was it when it came to having children in our family. We had been gifted this child by God and by this woman, his biological mother, and we were going to be a boy-centric family. Then I gave birth to our daughter and we were the family who had one of each gender. Now that we are considering adding a third child, the question that comes up often is “Do you want another boy or another girl?”

I had not heard of sex selection planning until several women around me were having their second and third child and trying to have a boy or girl. And they were having success!! At the time, I had my adoptive son and I was so intrigued by it all because I had struggled SO HARD to have the child I had that I couldn’t imagine trying to plan intercourse and do other things to secure that I would have a child of a specific gender. Now that I have an adopted son and a biological daughter I have wondered…why not try???

I’ll be honest when answering the question, Do I want a another boy or another girl? I want both a girl and a boy. I have HORDED (yes horded) all my daughter’s clothes and I can relate to her because of her curiosity and enjoyment in singing and dancing. But I find the future parenting of a boy so much more intriguing, and, honestly, easier for some reason. And I’m pretty sure boys are just less expensive based on just the amount of clothes I have for my daughter versus what I have for my son. But in my heart, I really want another girl. I think my son is such an amazing big brother, and he would do so well having two sisters to watch over as they all grows up and develop that sibling bond. My daughter needs another girl to either balance her out or to compliment her girliness and currently all of her friends are boys and I think having a girl as her life long friend would do her good. Which is strange because I always thought I wanted boy-girl-boy combo.

Yes, I know….we have had a pretty bad rate of GETTING pregnant, and then STAYING pregnant, why would I even consider working towards picking the gender of a baby, ANY baby? I think that is part of it….we have struggled so much, we have done so many things, I just want to switch it up a little. Call me crazy, because I am, but I like to try new things and see how they work out for me. So why not look into and even try to act like other couples and try to have a baby of a particular sex. I know that going into it….our chances are slim on any account and if it didn’t work for a few months, then we would go back to the basics of having sex often, much to the pleasure of my husband.

EVERYONE has suggestions on how to have a boy or girl…..have sex during this time, drink this, have sex in this position, etc. In my limited research the Shettles method is most popular right now and so I decided to follow this if I could. Again, we really are not putting any real favor that this would give us a girl or boy, but we thought we tried so many other things in the past just to get pregnant, why not try this.

My research thanks to Google and listening to many conversations with friends over wine found that mostly Shettles says you should have sex until you ovulate if you want a girl and to have sex after you ovulate if you want a boy. I found a very easy and simple calendar site that I can enter in my cycle date and chose if I want a boy or girl and it will tell me when to have sex. I use this information in conjunction with my Woman Log tracking app as well as my donated ovulation tests to plan our sex. Oh how fun!

To be honest….I’m scared about this. Our track record of having timed intercourse, with or without the help of fertility drugs is pretty much a slim chance. Our rate of getting pregnant with unprotected sex has been about 5% over the last 7+ years. Within that 5% we have had a 75% success rate of miscarriage. That is a HUGE chance for heartbreak to happen in all directions. But for us, with a new hope and determination that things would be different, we have decided to try to have a girl. I might not follow all the rules, and probably will have sex a few times outside of the girl “window” but it is good for us to dream and have hopes than live in fear.

So is gender selection for us or just for fun? I don’t know if it is what we should be doing but I do know all the trying will be fun.

Have you ever wished for a certain sex of a baby? Have you tried any methods and they worked? Didn’t work? Any suggestions on trying for a boy or girl?

This is a continuation of my journey through the thoughts, feelings and experiences contemplating adding a third child to our family. My initial post provides a glimpse into the reality and the joke of this question for our family. I also question The 40 Year Gap and discuss how our family is Comfortable as a Family of Four. I also share our Pregnancy Fire Drill that happened a few months ago. I really struggle if I should go in The Bubble when trying to conceive. I then asked the question, “Can Facebook Help Me Get Pregnant?” My husband and I also consider Is Gender Selection for Us or Just for Fun? Then we tried my Trifecta for Getting Pregnant and it worked!!!