Ultrasound Boy or Girl checks are eagerly awaited by most expectant parents. Most parents today will want to find out the sex of their baby before the birth. One of the most common ways to do this is with an ultrasound, most frequently performed at between 18 and 20 weeks of gestation. According to a 2012 study published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, no less than 69 percent of parents wanted to know. Among the reasons cited, 77.8 percent wanted to know “out of curiosity,” 68 percent “just wanted to know,” and 66.8 percent did so “because it was possible.”
Ultrasound is a non-invasive technology which uses audible sound waves to create high-contrast images. It is commonly used to visualize fetuses during prenatal care, and, when used in this way, is referred to as obstetric sonography. It is a preferred method of imaging during pregnancy as it neither involves radiation nor poses harm to either the fetus or mother.
An ultrasound is routinely used at different stages of the pregnancy. While most practitioners will wait until at least six weeks to perform the first ultrasound, the gestational sac may be seen as early as four and a half weeks, while a heartbeat may be detected as early as five. via verywellfamily.com
The True Purpose of the Ultrasound Scan – and It’s Not the Ultrasound Boy or Girl Assessment!
Typically, ultrasound is used to provide diagnostic medical images that are used to visualize muscles, tendons, internal organs, fetuses, etc. With these images, one can determine a child’s gender. If the child is a boy, a protrusion with a turtle-like shape will be present between the legs. A baby girl, on the other hand, will show a hamburger-like image signifying the clitoris and labia.
Also, if the protuberance of the child is greater than 30 degrees, the baby is more likely to be a boy. If it is more parallel to the body of the child, the baby is more likely to be a girl.
There are other ways to learn whether the child is a boy or a girl, however they are not as accurate as identifying a child’s sex organs.
How Accurate is an Ultrasound Boy or Girl Assessment?
Ultrasound may be a key tool for doctors to determine the health of a fetus, but for many expectant parents, it’s key for another important (and exciting) reason: It can clue you in on whether you’re expecting a boy or girl! But when it comes to figuring out your baby’s sex, how accurate are ultrasounds, really?
The accuracy of the report will depend on many factors, including the age of the baby, the equipment used, the technician, and the baby. However, there are certain signs in boy and girl ultrasound pictures that the technician uses to determine the gender of your baby.
One sign that mothers think automatically indicates a girl, for example, is the “Absence of Penis = Girl” theory. This theory states that if the ultrasound technician fails to find a penis the baby is automatically a girl. You will see below there is more to a girl ultrasound picture than the absence of a penis. In fact, particularly early on in pregnancy, a clitoris and a penis are roughly the same size and shape.
When doing an ultrasound to determine the sex of your baby, an ultrasound technician will actually look for girl genitalia—labia and clitoris. When these are seen, it is often referred to as the “Hamburger Sign” because the clitoris situated between the labial lips looks like a hamburger between two buns, or three lines, where the labia would be the buns of the hamburger and the clitoris would be the meat.
When the ultrasound technician is looking for a boy, they are looking for something called the turtle sign. This is where you can see the tip of the penis peeking out from behind the testicles. This may be harder to see with some babies, which is why there are multiple signs to look for during an ultrasound. The gestational age and position of the baby play a part in what can be seen.
Even as a fetus, baby boys can and will have erections. If you happen to be looking with an ultrasound during that time, you will see a very clearly defined penis. This obviously makes identifying a baby boy much easier. Seeing an erection may bother some parents, but don’t worry—it is normal for boys to have erections.
Expectant parents who want their child’s sex to remain a secret until birth are in the minority, said Dr. Stephen Carr, director of the Prenatal Diagnosis Center and of maternal-fetal medicine diagnostic imaging at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island in Providence. He said about 85 percent of couples want to find out the baby’s gender before delivery. They do so for several reasons: to know how to paint the nursery, pick a name or satisfy their curiosities about the family composition.
However, “more and more people are telling us they want to wait until the baby arrives to find out the sex,” Carr said. “It’s the last great surprise left,” he noted.
How Does the Pregnancy Scan Work?
Ultrasound uses high-frequency sound waves to produce an image on a screen of the baby in the mother’s uterus. The scans are typically done twice during pregnancy, but the one done between 18 and 22 weeks is when the sonographer (ultrasound technician) might identify the gender of the baby, if parents want to know.
Alternative Views On Finding Out the Sex of a Baby
Forget about waiting 40 weeks to find out the sex of your baby. Practically since the beginning of time, moms-to-be and the people who love them have come up with ways to try to figure out if that bun in the oven is a girl or a boy. If getting a surprise in the delivery room isn’t your style, check out the following ways — scientific, traditional and downright odd — to determine whether you should break out the pink or blue.
While blood tests that claim to predict your baby’s sex as early as seven weeks have been around for years outside of the U.S., they’ve never been very popular here — in part because it was unclear whether they worked. But a surprising analysis of 57 studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that these tests, which detect small pieces of fetal DNA that are present in a mom’s bloodstream during pregnancy, can be between 95% and 99% accurate. Screening kits, like the Pink or Blue Early DNA Pregnancy Test (available for $25), look for the presence of the male Y chromosome in a few drops of blood taken through a finger prick. If it’s there, you’re having a boy; if not, it’s a girl. via today.com
Of course, if you want to try for a particular sex (say, if you’re modern royalty tasked with producing a son and heir), then there are couple things that you can do. There’s also the Whelan method, which is kind of the opposite: If you want a boy, you should have sex four to six days before you’re about to ovulate and if you want a girl, two to three days before. The Whelan method is predicated on the idea of basal body temperature affecting sex determination.
Once the egg is fertilized, however, how do you know what you’ve got in there without the benefit of a window?
Walk with your right foot first, you’re having a boy; the opposite, you’re having a girl.
“If a pregnant woman wants to know the gender of the child she is bearing, listen to her and she will reveal it herself,” the Gospels said. “When she asks: ‘What do you think I am carrying?’, if you say: ‘A lovely boy’, and she does not blush, you should know for sure that she will have a girl.”
Blushing aside, there is some evidence that women have a sort of mother’s intuition about what’s going on in there: According to The Sun, a study found that women with no prior knowledge of their baby’s gender guess the sex correctly 71 percent of the time. Presumably, these researchers did not ask the mothers-to-be by using the “key test”—place a key in front an expecting mother and if she grabs it by the fat end, she’s having a boy, and by the narrow end, a girl.
According to the Gospels, you’re sicker in the first three months with a girl than with a boy, but a boy causes pain after the first trimester. But according to current medical professionals, if you suffer badly from morning sickness (a horrible misnomer if there ever was one) or are ill throughout your pregnancy, you’re more likely to be carrying a girl.
According to myth, if the father piles on the pounds during the mother’s pregnancy, then she’s carrying a girl. Interestingly, Danish researchers conducted a study of 100 fathers-to-be and discovered that indeed, those who had little girls were heavier at their births than those who had boys. via mentalfloss.com .
