Can I choose the gender of the unborn child?

The desire to give birth to a child of a certain sex is as old as the world. There is a great variety of tips, methods and methods that can be used to predict the sex of the unborn child.

It should, however, be said that the sex ratio is automatically regulated by nature. For example, it is reliably known that before the war the number of born boys is greater than that of girls. And, on the contrary, during the economic prosperity of the country girls are born more than boys.

There is no single-valued explanation for this fact until now. Although many scientists have been dealing with this problem for a long time. And scientists are concerned about this issue for a reason. It's not a secret that some diseases are transmitted only to boys or just girls. For example, hemophilia is transmitted from mothers to sons, and daughters are not ill. And for a long time it is known that boys are more vulnerable than girls, so they die more often in utero and in the period of newborn.

Now let's remember the genetics: we'll determine what is heredity. Heredity is the property of living organisms to transmit their characteristics to the offspring. And although each individual has his own peculiarities (for example, drawing lines on his fingers), however, the general properties of the species do not change and remain the same for many generations. In particular, a person as a separate species - Homo sapiens - exists (according to different data) from 40 thousand to several million years.

The basis of hereditary information is a set of chromosomes that are in the nucleus of the cell. Another, less significant part of the information is contained in the mitochondria in the form of mitochondrial DNA. Moreover, mitochondrial DNA is mostly transmitted from the mother, since the egg contains much more mitochondria than the sperm, because it is several thousand times larger.

Chromosomes in the ovum and spermatozoa also consist of DNA. DNA is a deoxyribonucleic acid. It consists of two chains, twisted around each other in a spiral. Each chain is made up of individual nucleotides consisting of deoxyribose (sugar), a phosphate residue and a nitrogenous base. There are four such nucleotides - adenine (A), guanine (D), thymine (T) and cytosine (C).

They are always paired, and thymine is always countered by adenine, and guanine is cytosine.

Approximately 1000 base pairs (А-Т: Ц-Г) in different combinations make up one gene. One cell contains about 1 million genes. The totality of all genes constitutes the genotype of the organism.

Thanks to the genotype, the organism inherits the entire complex of hereditary data. But the external environment (this means everything: the climate, the social environment, nutrition, etc.) in one way or another affects the formation of the developing organism. Therefore, a complex of genotype and external influences called phenotypomy is the real expression of the genotype in each individual person.

Each species on Earth has a strictly defined number of chromosomes: the mouse has 40, the chimpanzee has 48, the drosophila has 8 flies, and the man has 46. But always two chromosomes are sexual, that is, they are responsible for the sex of the individual.

Thus, in humans 44 chromosomes are autosomes, and 2 - sex chromosomes. The child receives half the chromosomes from the mother, and the other half from the father. That is, there are 23 chromosomes in the spermatozoon and the ovum. I will not "upload" you with scientific terms and theories, but in each of these sets there is one sex chromosome. This is either the X chromosome responsible for the development of female characteristics, or the Y-chromosome, responsible for the development of masculine traits. And when the ovule, which always carries only the X chromosome, merges with the sperm carrying the X chromosome, then the future child is a girl. If the egg "gets" a sperm bearing the Y-chromosome, then a boy will turn out.

The spermatozoa carrying the Y chromosome are slightly smaller in size and much "quicker" than those that carry the X chromosome. But they are less hardy and therefore die more often on the way to the uterine tube. Therefore, even if such a sperm "runs" first into the tube, but does not "find" an egg there, which has not yet managed to "descend", it will die. But spermatozoa carrying the X chromosome are more viable and can last longer in the fallopian tube, "waiting" for ovulation.

This is the basis for one of the methods of planning the sex of the unborn child. By measuring the basal temperature, you need to determine the date of the next ovulation (if you do not feel it yourself). If the monthly is regular, then this day will be permanent (for example, the 14th day from the first day of the month). Based on this, you can calculate: if you want a girl, then the last sexual act should be no later than 2-3 days before ovulation. If you want a boy, then abstain for a week, and on the day of ovulation or one day before it can make a conception. In this case, you must observe one condition - and in that, and in another case you should have only one sexual act. Then this method will work. By the way, statistics (which knows everything) indicate that this method is effective in 70-80% of cases.

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