My great-grandmother was a lay midwife and delivered many babies. She said she could “tell” if a baby was a boy or a girl and claimed that her methods were incredibly accurate. Since I’ve had an ultrasound which made it very clear that our child is a boy, I thought I’d evaluate some of the tales I’ve heard to see how true they are.

Chinese Gender Chart
I found that there are actually several variations circulating. Most of the variations accurately predicted that our child was a boy.

Morning Sickness Method
Supposedly, you have more intense morning sickness if you are carrying a girl. My morning sickness is not as intense as it was with my girls, but yet, it is there and is more intense than it was with my first son. I don’t know what this means actually, except that I have morning sickness which still affects me 5 months into my pregnancy.

Heartbeat Method
According to this tale, if a child has a slow heartbeat, it’s a boy. If it has a fast heartbeat, it is a girl. The cut off is supposedly around 140. This child has a heartbeat of 150 consistently, so this myth didn’t accurately predict the gender of our child this pregnancy.

Out In Front Or All Around?
According to this myth, you can tell the gender of your child based upon how you are “carrying” the child. If you gain weight all over, your child is a girl. If your weight gain is all “out in front”, it’s a boy. For me, this has been true.

For this pregnancy, half of the myths of listed accurately predicted the gender of our child; half did not. This tells me that I had a 50/50 chance of guessing the gender of our child correctly! While the myths may not be of any real help in enlightening you as to your child’s gender, they are a fun way to pass time while waiting for your bundle of joy to show up.

November is National Adoption Month. If you are like most other Americans, adoption has touched you rlife in some way. And a survey conducted by the Dave Thomas Foundation reported that 39% of Americans have considered adopting themselves. Yet only 2% of families in the US actually take the leap. Why? Of course, some families decide it’s just not right for them. But others back off for reasons that, sadly, are myths.

The same study said that more than 8 out of 10 people were concerned about birthparents reclaiming their children after the adoption. However, dissolved adoptions happen in as little as 1% of cases-and that includes those dissolved by the adoptive parents. While more adoptions are interrupted before finalization, it is very rare for children to be removed from new homes. It can and does happen, but when a good agency locates and gets permission from both biological parents, this scenario is almost unheard of.

Another factor is cost. True, it can cost as much as $40,000 to adopt internationally. But many people don’t realize that you can adopt a child from foster care for little or even NO cost. Private adoptions might involve only attorney’s paperwork fees. Assistance available from individual states, and a federal tax credit also helps cover adoption costs.

Some people are scared that their child may have been kidnapped or coerced from its mother. If you work with a reputable agency, this won’t happen. And if you adopt from within the United States, you can usually meet the birthmother. In addition, the State Department has banned adoptions from nations where this is suspected.

Some people are afraid they’or others’won’t be able to accept the child as their own. Thankfully, the Dave Thomas survey also discovered that 2/3 of Americans view adoption very positively. Significant percentages of people view adoptive children as no different than biological children.

If your family has thought about adopting, but gave up the idea, take another look. It’s easy to find trustworthy information online. You just may find that all your roadblocks have been removed.

I first heard this “myth” from my midwife while expecting one of my children. The heart rate was 155 beats per minute and she accurately predicted I was having a female child.

Being the curious type, I asked her for more information. If the heart rate is over 145 beats per minute she said, it most almost always indicated a girl. If it was under 145 beats per minute, it was a boy. You don’t say! It seemed a little crazy to me, but you know, this method did accurately predict the sexes of my children, and also my sister’s child.

For my girls, they all had heartbeats of over 150 beats per minute in utero. My son had a heartbeat of 130 beats per minute or around there most of the time. I say most of the time, because his heart rate(just like his sister’s heart rates) did increase with age. Therefore, I’d say from my experience, that the early heart rates should be used as a predictor if you are interested in trying out this method.

Of course, you won’t really know with 100% certainty until after the birth of you child, so it’s best to NOT get your hopes up. I’ve known people who really desired one gender over the other and were crushed when they discovered that the child they were carrying may not be the gender they wanted.

My sister has two children and was hoping for a male child with each pregnancy. As we were both pregnant at the same time with our 2nd and 5th children respectively, we decided to have some fun and try to figure out the gender of our unborn babies using many of the old wive’s tales we had heard during our childhood. Her child had a heartbeat of 160 beats per minute–a girl–according to this myth. My child had a heartbeat of 130 beats per minute–a boy. It should be noted that as they aged, her child’s heartbeat dropped, and my child’s heartbeat increased. She refused to accept anything other than the reality of a male child, and this caused her great stress and anxiety during her pregnancy.

Our children were born one month and one day apart last year. Her child was a girl and my child was a boy. I joke with her that it took me four girls to get that boy (truly, I didn’t have five children for that reason I assure you) and she should keep trying! She was not amused.

Have you ever used this method to determine if your baby was a boy or a girl? Did it work for you?

There is just something about a big, pregnant belly that attracts dramatic stories that are always about “someone’s friend who knows some lady” who suffered some bizarre pregnancy malady. It’s never a firsthand account when it’s the really weird stories, but for one reason or another there are plenty of people who seem to just be bursting at the seams, waiting to spot a pregnant belly so they can share the stories.

Why in the world do people think that pregnant women want to hear these horror stories?

During my first pregnancy, soon after my manager announced to the office that I was expecting, one of my co-workers took me aside and told me, “I had a friend who knew a lady who went blind during her pregnancy…something about the baby resting on a nerve…she stayed blind until the baby was born and then all of a sudden her sight came back.” Then, of course, she added, “…but I’m sure that won’t happen to you.”

So now I not only had to worry about the usual pregnancy stuff, but now I could also add the fear of suddenly going blind. Great.

I heard a bunch of doozies while I was pregnant, sometimes from complete strangers who initiated a conversation with me just so they could share their stories. I was about seven months pregnant when a lady I didn’t even know came up to me and told me the story about her friend’s sister who was a little further along than me when she had a dream that her baby was having trouble breathing, so she mentioned it to her doctor, who of course ordered an emergency c-section which revealed that lo and behold the cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. “The baby survived,” she told me, “but if the mom hadn’t had that dream then who knows?”

Really, why do people feel compelled to force these stories onto pregnant women?

Personally, I didn’t believe the majority of the stories I heard. I think that some of them started with someone saying, “I wonder if the baby resting on a nerve could make the mom blind?” which then evolved into “I heard that pregnant women can go blind during pregnancy,” and then to “I know a friend who went blind during pregnancy!” and so on.

It got to the point to where I would just stop people when the stories began, telling them that I was nervous enough as it was and I certainly didn’t need fodder for my anxiety. Really, pregnancy made me emotional enough; I didn’t need more things to worry about.

You have two choices when people start telling you these stories:

1. Listen politely and then spend months trying to get the story out of your head.

2. Give the storyteller a horrified look and ask them to stop telling you the story immediately.

As for me, I opted for #2.