It's a ???

Let's face it, 9-months is a long time to wait for an event as momentous as the arrival of a new baby. In today's "I want information and I want it NOW" world, the wait to find out the gender of the baby (whether it be 20-weeks for a gender ultrasound or the whole 40-weeks for the birthday surprise) MUST be filled with some kind of speculation to help pass the time.

So far, I have played the gender guessing game with both of my children. And so far, I have been 100% wrong, but I'm not about to stop guessing now!! Now, for those who haven't a clue what they might be carrying, there are many different "resources" available to help formulate a guess. First of all, there are the "mature" ladies in the grocery store. Solicited or not, these wise ladies are likely to give you an opinion based on things like the width of your nose, how you're carrying the baby, the size of your rear-end, etc. Be prepared though, if you choose this route, to be poked, prodded, and have your shirt lifted so a good view of your backside can be obtained. Also be prepared for questions about intimate things including the kind of underwear your husband wears. While these things may seem intrusive, they are all important pieces of the puzzle used to figure out the gender mystery. Based on my experience, roughly half of these ladies are able to correctly predict the baby's gender.

Should the "in person" resources seem too daunting, never fear! It is possible to NEVER leave your home and obtain reliable information about whether you are carrying a lad or lass right over the internet! Everyone who has ever been pregnant had heard of the chinese lunar calendar method of gender prediction. It plugs the mother's age at conception (in lunar years) and the month of conception into a formula and tells you what you are having. Plain and simple. So far, I have had two children and the chinese lunar calendar has a 50% success rate with them. Another lesser-known source is babyman.net. This guy collects similar information, but has a different formula because the answers are not always the same. This method predicted my first two children would be girls. I have one boy, one girl, so....wow, look at that...50% correct.

And let's not forget the gender mentor test. This is the one where you send them a blood sample and they email you the gender. I'm not sure what the accuracy rate of this one is, but I have known people for whom it has been wrong. At $275 a pop, I think I'll pass on this one. Besides, if I knew the gender this early, what would I do for the rest of the pregnancy?

The bottom line is, ALL of these methods are what are known in the marketing research world as "SWAGS" (sophisticated, wild %&$ guesses). Anybody can make a guess and have a pretty darn good chance of being right (well at least as good as the chance of being wrong). Though my "gut" method of predicting has yet to be right, it is based on a much smaller sample size than many of the other "sources" out there.

I know it's early in the game, but I am ready to make a guess. In 3 months or so, we'll see if I've broken my wrong streak or not. For the record, here's what the other sources have to say....

The old wives (about 60% boy, 40% girl)
Chinese lunar calendar (GIRL)
Babyman.net (BOY)

And my guess (based really on nothing other than gut feeling) is...."It's a boy!" This doesn't mean I want a boy or don't want a boy. I want a healthy baby and gender is totally unimportant to me (though a fun thing to speculate about during the boring first half of pregnancy). This is just based on my (possibly out of order) gut feeling. Hey, regardless of my history, I've got a 50% chance of being right! :)

...TO BE CONTINUED