A couple cannot influence the baby’s gender. PHOTO | STOCK
Scientific guidance and proof are what Lydia Nabuduwa (not real) needed when she, just two years with her husband, committed to undertaking all measures to get a baby boy.
Yes, it would have been possible, if the husband had embarked on using In Vitro fertilisation (IVF) but she said that option would have imposed several weights and conditions on her.
The IVF costs are explosive and that would require the husband to undergo
strict laboratory procedures in order to have his sperm transmitted to his wife
,something she did not dare to suggest to her husband.
“Being the second wife who had not gone through traditional introduction ceremonies or any pre-visit at my parents’ home, I did not want to suggest
such an option,” she said adding: “Al-ready my co-wife had three girls with
him and also once my first child with him was also a girl, I needed to start fig-
uring out things on my own quietly.”
“It [IVF] was very expensive. I consulted three gynaecologists and was told to
prepare about Shs18 million to Shs21 million for each trial cycle. There is no way I could suggest such an option to him. I badly wanted a son for us to strengthen my position in the relationship but suggesting that [IVF] option to him would make me look so desperate,” she explains.
She painfully recollected that their relationship and communication with her husband had become rocky and delicate, something she needed to remedy.
“At first he was good and always checked on me frequently. He would spend more time at home. He covered all home costs but after our first baby became a girl, everything changed and the attention dropped,” she remembers.
Lydia, who currently oscillates between her retail business in Nakalubya, a Kampala suburb, and a part-time job at the Wakiso District headquarters,
opted to talk to colleagues for advice.
“When I shared my troubles with my colleagues; I was told to aim at having
intercourse with him on the 14th day of my menstrual cycle to get a boy,” she
recounts adding “I didn’t believe at first but also I was not sure on how to calculate the days until I reached out to a friend working with the Red Cross who took me through the process.”
Despite the rigour this process imposed on her and the precision it demanded of her, the option was futile because “the second child was also a girl and nothing changed but things seemed to get only getting worse.”
Lydia’s case is not an exception scores are said to be braving through unauthentic procedures as a means of determining the gender of their child. They include but are not limited to; targeting integrating intercourse with one’s spouse on the first three days of ovulation or even on the exact day of ovulation to get a baby boy at birth or consider having intercourse at a given hour of the night on a given side of the bed.
It is also opined that many women believe that family planning methods
like implants are responsible for their failure to conceive boy children.
Experts’ views
Dr Joel Lwasa, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at Kawempe Referral Hospital, says apart from timing the ovulation time, the other non-scientific methods of getting a male baby are merely perceptions that lack scientific justification.
He explains that a man’s sperm has two chromosomes and when he releases the Y chromosome the baby will be a boy and X for a girl. However, Dr Lwasa, says the Y chromo-some moves very fast, it also dies very fast, meaning that women who have intercourse on the day of ovulation, or after ovulation are more likely to have a male baby because of this fast-moving sperm that meets the egg.
“Now, for women who have sex way before ovulation, they are likely to have a female baby because the X sperm is slow-moving, but resilient, stays longer
and by the time ovulation happens the Y-bearing sperm has died out, and you
have mostly the X-bearing,” Dr Las said.
Addressing the misconception that certain contraceptive methods influence the gender of the baby, Dr Lwasa clarified that no family planning method encourages or hinders the birth of specific gender. He advised women to follow the recommendations of health-care providers when selecting a family planning method, assuring them that it would not impact the gender of the baby.
He said couples can have sexual intercourse during or after ovulation if they
want a boy child because the chances are high. “Having sex before ovulation, as well as after ovulation, you are biasing, you are creating odds for the X-bearing chromosome. When you have sex after ovulation, you are biasing towards the
Y-bearing sperm which is a male child,” Dr Lwasa said.
He added: “Basically, that is why I say that the timing and chance is the only way you can try to bias.”
Dr Annette Keesiga Muhimbise, a gynaecologist at Kawempe Referral Hospital, said although she had heard people say one can determine the gender
of a baby, she criticised them saying that there is no scientific basis.
She explained that people who say they got a baby boy after using an unscientific method, she believes it happens by coincidence. Dr Keesiga noted that the only way one can determine the gender of the baby is through Vitro fertilisation (IVF) by joining a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm in a laboratory.
She explained that apart from IVF, there is no guaranteed way to influence the chances of having a baby boy. “When we do IVF, those small embryos, you can choose which one is a girl, which one is a boy and they are the
ones you will transfer into the woman. But for that other bit, I would not
tell a client the unscientific method,” Dr Keesiga said.
Dr Keesiga also emphasised that no family planning method affects the gender of the baby although she noted that some may delay someone’s return to fertility. The claim that couples can influence the sex of their unborn child lacks proof and scientific evidence. Such claims are only myths that are not only unfounded but have dire effects on couples hence unreliable.
