Intro to Swaying LIBRARY - General Swaying Info Found HERE

UPDATED 12-14-17 I'm going to unsticky these and let them sink into oblivion. It's just too much work for me to keep all these threads going and up to date and barely anyone reads them anyway. The links in the Complete Index here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ete-index.html is in the process of being completely updated and that is your go to spot for the most current swaying info.

Hi! Welcome to the Intro to Swaying LIBRARY, an attempt to house all the sway info under one roof for easier reading. These are just the essays without the discussion afterwards - if you have a question or comment about any of these topics, follow the posted link to read the original essay, the discussion about it, and to ask questions on any of these topics.

These are the introductory, basic, philosophical, theoretical type of threads, the ones you might like to read once but prob. won't use on a day-to-day basis.

If you ever see a mistake...

PLEASE let me know! There is so much information from so many different sources that I have not always had time to hunt down and double and triple check things, so if I got if from a source that was inaccurate or if I misunderstood or typed something in wrong or if something has changed since I heard about it, then things may not always be 100% correct or accurate.

My goal is to have everything on this site as accurate and up-to-date as possible and I ALWAYS want to know if something is wrong or doesn't make sense. And if you've heard about other information that contradicts what I am saying (of which there is a lot) please let me know. I will be happy to explain further and/or doublecheck my advice.

Thank you so much!!

NEW TO GENDER SWAYING? READ THIS! (most of the links are simply to the essays I reposted below in this Intro to Swaying Library.)

Hi! We're so happy you found us! We're not like the other swaying sites and here is why!
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...they-said.html! and
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...t-swaying.html and
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ying-odds.html and
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/scie...gic-foods.html
If you are an IG refugee, please read this essay to know the difference between what we advise here and what they advise on IG. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...sh-anyway.html

If you read things that seem confusing or scary, ASK! We love questions and there are real, scientific reasons for every tidbit of info on this site. If something doesn't seem right to you, ASK. We are humans and make mistakes now and then, or maybe you've seen some info that we don't have. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...e-mistake.html

Here is a list of the most basic introductory threads that you might want to read before you jump in!!

Abbreviation Translation (all those annoying acronyms, defined):

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...anslation.html

The Complete Index (atomic's swaying essays)

Abbreviation Translation (all those annoying acronyms, defined):

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...anslation.html

The Complete Index (atomic's swaying essays)

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ete-index.html!!!

The Most Dangerous Things for Swaying:

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...s-swaying.html

Overview of Different Sway Strategies:

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...e-swaying.html!

Personalizing your sway:

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...your-sway.html

Planning a Blue Sway:

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/tryi...blue-sway.html

Planning a Pink Sway:

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/tryi...pink-sway.html

IG vs. GD swaying? What's the difference? And who is this Atomic Sagebrush, anyway?? (original essay and comments here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...sh-anyway.html)

...or, "why should I take gender swaying advice from a chick with 4 sons??"

UPDATED - I am now pregnant with a daughter!! Thank you Robert Trivers, Dan Willard, Satoshi Kanazawi, Valerie Grant, Elissa Cameron, Melissa Larson, Fiona Matthews, Sarah Hrdy, with special mention for Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, and EO Wilson, and the many others who have done invaluable research into declining maternal condition and gender ratio.

This story actually doesn't begin with me, it begins with the creation of the InGender site back in 2006. InGender was originally a group of ladies who came together on a message board for support with gender disappointment and it branched out from there. Some of these ladies ended up using the newest technology (PGD and Microsort) to get their desired genders while others scoured studies and articles looking for natural methods (beyond Shettles, who nearly everyone had tried and failed at).

Altho Tamara has become ubiquitous with IG swaying, there were actually dozens of people who worked on the sway in the early days, including a biologist who had access to a lot of awesome studies in the days before studies were widely available online, and a woman who singlehandedly translated the entire French Gender Diet from French into English!! The data that these intrepid gals came up with, gradually over the course of several years, evolved into the IG-style sway. It included timing (either cutoff or O+12 for pink, BD at O for a boy), diet (mostly centered around the FGD but also including some other elements), hormones (raising progesterone for pink, raising testosterone and estrogen for blue), pH (lowering pH for pink, raising it for blue), ions (neg for girls, pos for blue), and supplements (which helped with pH, diet, ions, and hormones.)

The IG philosophy is (altho that has changed a bit lately, with diet being given slightly more importance than it once was) that all these things swayed equally and should be given equal weight, and if you did not want to include one of them, that would ruin your sway. In fact, I have been told that sways that don't include all 7 sway factors are not even included in the statistics and so when you look at the IG stats, always keep in mind that many, many sways are not included in this data. Most everyone is quite familiar already with the IG-Style sway (and if you are not, the IG FAQ has been posted in the Dream Members section for IG-style swayers to use when the IG site is non-functional) so I won't elaborate any more than that.

Anyway, that brings me, to, well, me. I am just a mom like you guys and like the ladies who did the original IG research, no fancy credentials. I had two sons in my early 20's without swaying at all. I had zero gender disappointment with either and really loved being a boy mom and still do. In fact, I particularly wanted a boy with DS 1 and happily got him. I had always wanted a big family of 5 or 6 and just assumed like we all do, that there would be at least one girl in the mix. Unfortunately, life sort of got in the way of that plan and we kept postponing having more kids until we had a bigger house, more money, better timing, but it never happened, and eventually it became glaringly apparent that if we waited any longer for those things to fall into place, there would BE no more children. I went to work for 2 years to get us into a good financial situation to help support having more babies, and by that time, 13 years had passed since I had my last child.

We started TTC with the notion that we may not even be able to conceive (I was 36 years old and it had been a long time since I had been pregnant!) Someone had once told me about Shettles timing, and altho I still did not have a strong gender preference, I did hope that I could have one more child and that it would be a girl because for personal reasons, I did not want to raise a boy as a functional only child, but was ok with having just one girl and it seemed like one more pregnancy, one girl - it would be perfect!! So I sort of vaguely did Shettles timing and happily conceived after only 2 months of trying. EVERYTHING in my life was blue-friendly but I had never heard of "swaying" at that point or anything related to it.

At this point I still did not have a strong gender preference but the pregnancy was very different from my first two and the symptoms/OWT and of course our beloved Chinese Gender Predictor ended up convincing me that my baby was indeed a girl and set me up for HUGE devastation at my ultrasound. I felt like a world-class idiot - I mean, my uterus was like 2 days away from retirement and here I was going through pregnancy and labor again and for WHAT? Another BOY? And I had to have another baby to give a son a sibling?? I felt like the butt of a very large joke and that everyone was laughing at me (and some were, I'm sure, which didn't help!) I was really not in a very good place but somehow I knew I couldn't be alone. I Googled, "I can't believe I am having another boy" and immediately found InGender.

Anyway, long story short, I soldiered on thru my GD with the help of my IG friends, ended up making peace with it before my third son arrived, and things were ok. I did still hope that since I was going to TTC one last time for my son's sake, that this final time I would get lucky and get a girl. And so I decided to look into this "swaying" business. I thought it sounded pretty silly and farfetched at first, basically voodoo wrapped up in science talk, parts of it seemed nonsensical to me, and it did not match with my lifestyle because I have always eaten tons of dairy. But I didn't want to just discount it out of hand either. People really DID seem to be having some measure of success with it beyond 50-50.

I concluded, IF swaying could possibly be true, there HAD to be some reason why - swaying would have to help human survival in some way or else it never would have evolved/been designed into us by God, and I started to do a little research with that truth in mind. Almost immediately I came upon the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis Trivers and the Maternal Dominance Hypothesis http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/.../ep0196107.pdf. (these two theories are said to be in disagreement but I think they really support each other) The ladies of IG had never heard of the TWH and they all but discounted the MDH but I quickly began to see how all of the traditional sway tactics either a)didn't actually work at all and even might sway in the wrong direction OR b) were really just tapping into these phenomona.

You can read my blog from when I was doing this research here:Trivers Willard hypothesis and a brief explanatory essay about Trivers Willard here Understanding the Trivers Willard Hypothesis

Shortly thereafter I also came across some research done by a biologist studying Trivers Willard which indicated that levels of blood glucose could indicate the gender of offspring that a woman might conceive, CABNR Error 404 - Page not found and the Oxford study was published You are what your mother eats: evidence for maternal preconception diet influencing foetal sex in humans which seemed to TOTALLY support everything I was beginning to realize had to be true about gender swaying - that a lower cal, lower protein, lower fat, lower nutrient diet, with blood sugar levels kept on the low side, possibly with lower sodium intake, and where the mother was in declining condition and even losing weight, swayed pink (Low-Everything), and a High-Everything diet seemed to sway blue.

You can read my thought processes in my blog, but I was taking the earliest steps along the path to what would eventually become the type of sway I recommend. I got very active on the sway board and I was even a forum mod for awhile. IG adopted several of my recommendations on exercise, losing/gaining weight, and skipping/eating breakfast. Despite this, I was getting ready for my sway at this point and I just wasn't ready to turn my back on all the traditional sway tactics. So I included some things like the IG supplements in my sway and the results were, DS 4.

I strongly feel that the main reason why my sway failed was because I was taking too many supplements - but I got scared. I wanted to hedge my bets. I took a month off of swaying to gain some weight back to lose again and I got pg that month of course, so not only was I chock full of supplements but I had gained 3 lbs right before conceiving too. My son is amazing and I have no regrets about that but I do have regrets that I never got to test the TWH the way I really wanted to.

So, after a rocky, high risk pregnancy, my 4th son arrived safe and sound. I quit the swaying forum because it was really driving me insane to give advice to people that I KNEW either didn't sway at all or even swayed in the wrong direction, and to watch people do things that anyone could plainly see was sending their testosterone through the roof chasing after sway "factors" that didn't even work. Plus, some of the advice on IG was and is just plain DANGEROUS and even though I tried to get it corrected, it was like it fell onto deaf ears. People were getting terribly sick on both the pink and blue sway diets and everyone just seemed miserable all the time. Marriages were falling apart! When sways failed, it was like a pack of vultures descended to pick everything apart and play the blame game. And no one seemed to feel that there was any problem at all with any of it.

But by that point, I had been bitten by the science bug. I knew that gender swaying was real and that we had the data we needed in order to have successful sways was finally, for the first time in human history, right there and available to all of us. This is possible!!! I wanted to shout it from the rooftops and stop strangers in the streets to tell them all about it!! I kept doing research on my own simply because I enjoyed it so much and the things I found were so very exciting. I have been doing research for 3+ years now and NOTHING I've ever come across has made me doubt that gender swaying is real, and that Trivers-Willard, Maternal Dominance Hypothesis, and blood glucose levels are at the heart of it.

Then IG began to fall apart and the spinoff sites started, and NBP approached me with an offer to join this site and I jumped at it. Little did she know that I had been chomping at the bit for an opportunity to develop a better way to sway, that was physically, emotionally, and maritally more healthy and balanced, and that actually focused on what WORKED rather than OWT and "science" that had literally NO real-world support. (Studies are all well and good, but if something doesn't add up in the real world and most importantly, make sense with the fundamental workings of the human body, then it cannot be true and there must be another explanation for the results). I felt then and still feel even more so, that it is entirely possible to have a sway for a boy or a girl, that is easier to do, is healthier, and yet works better than the IG sway does and that is why I get up every day to come do this, instead of taking up crochet.

So just a brief overview of how my view of swaying is different than the traditional/IG style sway:

1)Timing - I do not believe timing sways in any real way. If it does sway slightly, it's because of certain factors that tend to be true most of the time for a majority of people - as in, people tend to have drier CM at some parts of the cycle than others. If you are NOT in this majority, timing will do NOTHING for you. If you have altered your cycle with diet and supps, your past cycles very well may be meaningless for predicting future timing. And even if you are in this majority, there are much more reliable ways to accomplish the same effects, like using antihistamines to dry up CM. Plus, timing is very difficult for people to figure out and can keep you from getting pg (esp. O+12)

2)Sperm count/quality - I believe that for reasons we do not fully understand, lower numbers and lower quality of sperm, sways pink. I also believe that any condition in the female reproductive tract at any point between vagina and egg, that makes it harder for sperm to survive to make it to the egg, also sways pink. My theory of swaying is "the fertility theory" which is just that anything that improves fertility, tends to sway blue, and anything that lowers fertility, tends to sway pink.

3)pH - I do not believe that pH sways because X sperm "love" low pH and Y sperm "love" high pH. ALL sperm prefer medium pH which is why both semen and CM naturally have pH in the 7's. Low pH may sway pink because it makes it harder for sperm to survive to make it to the egg (see 2 above). High pH in the vagina may help sway blue by counteracting low vaginal pH and making up for any lack of EWCM in the vagina. I do not believe that anything you stick into your vagina can infiltrate your entire reproductive tract and so I do not believe that repeated douching for days after your attempt, is in any way necessary or a good idea. pH only matters WHEN you DTD and not afterwards and obsessively checking pH only sends testosterone skyrocketing.

4)EWCM -Lots of alkaline EWCM (in the 7's) helps sperm to survive and swim to the egg. Again, nothing to do with one sperm preferring high pH, it's that ALL sperm do best in medium pH and good EWCM, and more, healthier sperm seems to equal more boys.

5)Diet - Diet is BY FAR the most important and effective sway tactic there is. I believe the IGD and FGD sway, not because of minerals but because they tend to be more Low-Everything for pink swayers, High-Everything for blue swayers. They are very far from ideal tho (especially for blue swayers) and I hope that everyone fully investigates their diet options before settling on the IGD or FGD just because they have more results. I didn't even MAKE a diet until well into 2011 so that I don't have as many results as "the other guys" doesn't say anything at all about my diet, other than that it is new.

6)Minerals - I don't think the minerals sway in the ways that IG and FGD claim and since I'm sure most everyone is sick of hearing about me yammer on about that, I'll just post the link to my series of essays on this issue (be sure to read all three, links at the bottom of first essay)http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...-CONTROVERSIAL

7)Ions - Sperm do NOT have different electrical charges and therefore CANNOT be pulled along by any ion in CM or semen. What are the REAL differences between X sperm and Y sperm?? Plus, your body MAKES ions out of the foods you eat to do the tasks it needs ions to do, and does not get its ion supply by collect mystical particles that emanate from the moon on a mission to invade your vagina. Everyone's CM contains calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium ions - it's supposed to! PLEASE do not waste precious financial resources on gimmicky devices that are supposed to surround you with ions of the right "type". Does it really make sense to you on a gut level that by wearing a bracelet, you can make yourself conceive a child of a certain gender?? If it's an affordable and pretty bracelet, no harm done, but I have seen too many swayers simply "up the ions" to counteract issues with their diets!! Diets really sway for actual biological reasons, bracelets don't.

8)The moon and seasons - even though I don't believe ions sway either via moon phases or seasons, there MAY be something to the idea that the moon and/or seasons do sway in some other fashion. You can read about that here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...naception.html http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...ns-and-swaying

9)Hormones - I do believe that higher but still normal levels of testosterone sway blue in both DH and DW (so agree with IG on this) with the warning that artificially elevated levels of testosterone in men (as in, steroid usage) may actually sway pink by harming sperm. I suspect that high levels of estrogen sway pink in DH (again, agree with IG) - still not convinced that estrogen is important for DW either way (because you NEED a decent amount of estrogen to get pg with a girl or a boy) but if it does sway, I am in agreement with IG that higher estrogen in DW prob. sways blue. I am REALLY not convinced that high progesterone = girls. My thinking is that it makes more sense that higher levels of all three sex hormones = boys because everything that helps fertility, seems to sway blue and progesterone is def. required for fertility. Since the jury on this is still out, I think it's best for swayers to concentrate primarily on testosterone and to a lesser extent, estrogen, rather than progesterone. Progesterone will take care of itself - on a blue diet it will go up, on a pink diet it will decline.

Your body does NOT get its hormones by EATING testosterone or progesterone. It manufactures all its own hormones from fat and cholesterol. So the advice given on IG to eat eggs because they contain progesterone, to raise progesterone and sway pink, is not good advice, because your body will simply use the cholesterol in eggs to manufacture testosterone and estrogen if it needs them!! Same with red meat - you do not get your testosterone from eating red meat, your body uses the fat and cholesterol to make testosterone - red meat is good for testosterone either way but just so you know that it's not the testosterone in meat doing anything. You also must use supps carefully to make sure you are not depleting your body of hormones you need for conception.

And you must control the demand side of the equation as well through lifestyle changes...if swaying pink, you want to assure your body that you don't need massive amounts of testosterone to survive, and if swaying blue, you want to encourage your body to make more. Understanding the "Law" of Testosterone Supply and Demand

10)Blood sugar - I believe lowering blood sugar for pink and keeping it stable for blue is among the most important things you can do for your sway. However, the advice given on IG is inaccurate and not helpful (and this info originally COMES from me so please trust me!) You can eat sugar when TTC pink (don't eat it all day long, tho) OR blue (eat protein and sweets together) and keeping blood sugar low for pink isn't only important in the morning! And for the love of all that is good and holy, if you are swaying for blue, DO NOT EAT a breakfast of Rice Krispies with non-dairy creamer because that is about the worst thing you can do for your blood sugar!!http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...ls-to-TTC-Pink http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...s-for-TTC-Blue

11)Exercise - If you have read "cardio sways pink" and "weights sway blue", well, the reality is vastly more complex than that and doing cardio in moderation MAY SWAY BLUE!http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...a-both-genders

12)Things like moon phases, Jonas Calendar, Chinese Gender Calendar, biorhythms, etc. have NO scientific data to back them up. DO NOT stress yourself out over these things in any way and it is highly concerning to me that anyone should do things like skip a month of TTC or worse yet, go onto BCP (especially blue swayers, because BCP sway pink!) in an attempt to get your ovulation into the right moon phase or biorhythm. I saw several swayers doing this on IG and being encouraged to do so, and it is appalling to me because regardless of swaying, BCP also have side effects and risks that should not be taken lightly.

13)Safety first, last, and always. Please read this essay to see a long list of things that are too dangerous for swaying, some of which people on IG and the IG FAQ, will advise you to do. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...s-swaying.html

14)Never forget, testosterone raises and drops based on cues that is receives from your environment. If your body "thinks" you need more testosterone for survival (because you are undertaking challenges that seriously matter to you - like swaying - or doing things that your body interprets as competitive - again, like swaying) it WILL MAKE testosterone out of anything it can get its greedy little enzymes on - INCLUDING eggs, milk, tahini, and even your own stored body fat. Pink swayers, there is no way for you to utterly deplete your diet/body of the raw materials to make testosterone without seriously harming your health (and you won't be able to conceive then anyway.) You have to cut demand for testosterone at the same time and swaying can all too often feed the beast. DON'T attempt sway tactics that do not work and run the risk of raising T thru the roof, like timing or obsessively checking pH. A "perfect" sway can TOTALLY be a failed sway!!

Blue swayers, if you are getting overwhelmed and discouraged with swaying, if you feel that you can't get it right, that it cannot happen for you, that you do not "deserve" a son, or that other people's sways are always better than yours, this is the kind of mindset proven to lower testosterone regardless of what foods you eat or what supps you take. YOU CAN DO THIS!!

15)If you can't get pregnant, you have NO CHANCE at your desired gender. Many things we do to sway makes it much less likely you'll get pg. It's fine for Tamara to say that she would have gone on swaying hard every month until menopause - she HAS her DG! It is MUCH better to hit it hard on diet and then drop the things that don't even sway to begin with, like timing, then to try and include everything, while reducing your odds of conception so far that it takes 6 months or more to conceive. Blue swayers will gain too much weight and pink swayers will lose too much weight.

16)ABOVE ALL - swaying must fit into your life and not the other way around. Swaying should not leave you a miserable, physically ill shell of your former self. Your kids and finances should not suffer and your marriage should not be strained because of swaying. People get their desired gender even after SEVERAL of the other, by doing nothing other than they have every other day of their lives - no swaying! Michelle Duggar has conceived 5 girls in a row after having 10 sons (of course interspersed with 4 girls), without swaying. NONE of us is predestined to have all or even mostly one gender. It may very well be that the only thing you need to do to get your desired gender is to get pregnant again.

READ ME FIRST - This isn't what they said! (original here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...they-said.html)

You may have noticed that the advice given on this site is not always the same as on other sites. True. But why is this exactly?

Most traditional swaying advice is based on four sources. Shettles (timing, abstinence, and pH), Ericcson (pH), O+12 (timing, abstinence), and the French Gender Diet people. (calcium and pH).

We'll take a closer look at these over the course of time, but for now, there is some pretty compelling evidence against ALL of them. Most of the studies that supports them (if any) are done by the discoverers themselves or by people selling products based on this "evidence" and some of them are done in very very small groups of people and are essentially worthless from a scientific viewpoint. Some of them are decades old and others were not double-blind studies (meaning, the researchers and the subjects knew in advance the result that was "supposed" to happen - that is a major no-no for studies). Yet others rely 100% on self-reported information which is inherently unreliable - one person may know exactly when they ovulated, but then again, they may have Oed early that month and therefore claiming that they conceived 2 days prior to O is completely wrong.

Only the favorable studies seem to find their way onto most gender swaying sites. On one of the most prominent swaying websites, it is clearly stated that NONE of the studies that disprove any of these things are posted. All that is presented, is the case FOR swaying using these methods, while the cases against them is never discussed.

Consequently, everything that follows is based on the unquestioned validity of these four notions and if they are all true, hey, that's great. We will end up with a great sway and it really IS our fault when sways fail. (On some sites, when people get opposites, they are all too often chastised for "not doing everything" to sway and their sways are picked apart and criticized mercilessly.) But if they're not true, then swaying is like trying to build a house on shifting sand - everything placed on top of them will be unreliable and unpredictable and swayers are setting themselves up for a huge disappointment.

So in this site, one of the goals is to provide a safe place to be able to question these sacred swaying cows because if they aren't true, then all swaying is crap and a complete waste of time. NO ONE will yell at you if you don't want to douche or drink massive amounts of Crystal Light, or try to scare you into swaying a certain way here.

The downside of all this is, it can be confusing to people trying to plan a sway, to hear the arguments against the traditional swaying methods. It would certainly be easier if we just went with the crowd and ignored the evidence against traditional swaying. It might feel better in the short term because we would feel in control of our sway and that we were guaranteed success. But people's sways fail, and the main reason they fail is because of bad information, because we keep repeating the same stale things and blaming ourselves when it doesn't work out. Unless we are willing to question again and again and assume nothing, swaying will never be any more reliable than it is now.

No-Fault Swaying! (original here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...t-swaying.html)

You may have read in various places that eating certain foods, taking certain supplements, or doing the deed (DTD) in a special position or at a certain time of the month, will guarantee you a baby of a particular gender. According to some, it’s almost as if, should you do all the right things, you will be all but promised a particular gender. Then if your sway doesn’t work out, then you’re left feeling guilty for that Ding Dong you ate 3 weeks before you ever got pregnant and/or angry with your husband because he didn’t want to ice his testicles!!

But that’s NOT what swaying is fundamentally all about. Swaying isn’t like following a recipe, where you add a pinch of this and a pinch of that, and if you do everything exactly right, 9 months later a baby of your desired gender (DG) will pop out of the oven. At of the day, swaying has very little to do with what you ate or didn’t eat on any one day or even every day, or any one thing you did or didn’t do.

Instead, swaying has everything to do with what is happening inside of your body. It’s what’s happening inside you and your husband (DH’s) body that determines your childrens’ gender. That’s why some people have ‘perfect’ sways but conceive opposites, while others who have never even heard the word ‘swaying’ (other than the wind through the trees) conceive children of both genders without even trying.

Of all the females that have ever been born on this earth, very few of their parents were ingesting large quantities of Crystal Light, and of all the males, practically all were conceived without testicle icing!!! YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANY ONE THING OR EAT ANY ONE FOOD TO MAKE YOURSELF HAVE A CHILD OF A PARTICULAR GENDER. You can do absolutely nothing any differently than you have every other day of your life, and still conceive a child of your DG - even if you’ve had 3-4-5-6 or even more of the other gender already. Because your internal body chemistry naturally changes from week to month to year, it may very well be that all you need to do to get your DG is simply get pregnant.

If that’s the case then, why even bother attempting to change our external environment? Why not just try to conceive (TTC) naturally, and hope for the best?

We could, actually. Any of us willing to “Duggar-it-out” and have an unlimited number of children, would eventually have an opposite, or even several. But for the rest of us, who may prefer smaller families for whatever reason, we may want to try to assist Mother Nature in whatever way we can.

Swaying works in two ways. By far the most important way, is by actually "convincing" your body to conceive a child of a particular gender by changing certain cues in your environment, and the other is by mimicking the physical processes through which your body conceives a child of a particular gender. So with every aspect of swaying, we’re working towards accomplishing one or both of those goals. We have to keep them BOTH in mind. In other words, if as evidence suggests, low sperm count sways pink, it doesn’t matter if a man is an overweight smoking deep sea diver who wears tighty whities and sits in a hot tub all day drinking aspartame-laced cranberry juice, if his sperm count remains high despite all that, he’s still going to father more daughters than sons. He did everything right in terms of swaying, but it wasn't enough to "convince" his body.

To sum up, swaying is not a matter of, do X,Y, and Z and you WILL get a guaranteed result. If it were, it would be called ‘guaranteeing'. You can do everything right and your body still may believe it’s better for you to have an opposite. You can do everything wrong and your body may still believe it’s better for you to have your DG even after several of the other gender.

So here's the approach - No-Fault Swaying. In which we all do the best we can with what we personally feel comfortable with...no second-guessing each other, no obsessing over the tiniest detail once the deed is done, NO BLAMING ANYONE EVER IF THEIR SWAYS FAIL!!! Although our goal is to come up with the very best sway techniques we can, even the very best sway is never going to be a guarantee because we cannot control every aspect of our bodies. Swaying isn't worth ruining your life, health, or marriage over.

Wishing everyone the best of luck!!!

Another way to look at the swaying odds... (original here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ying-odds.html)

Often we hear of gender selection being compared to a flip of a coin. We’ve heard it said so often that it’s hard to step away from that all-or-nothing expectation, and consequently when we sway, it’s tough to envision anything other than heads or tails, black and white…or in our case, pink or blue. “If you do these things, you are guaranteed your gender.” And so when we see people IRL who seem to eat right off the boy diet and DTD at all the wrong times but still have girls or vice versa, it’s confusing, scary, and makes us want to give up on swaying all together.

But swaying is so much more complicated than flipping a coin. Swaying isn’t all or nothing, it’s a complicated bunch of physical processes that work together in unpredictable ways we don’t even fully understand, ways that may very well be different in each person.

Perhaps a better way to envision the odds is to picture a die (a die is one of a set of dice, so picture just one dice) with a lot of sides on it. (Anyone who’s ever played the board game Scattergories will know just what I mean, or picture a die somewhat like a soccer ball.). Imagine that each of us carries with us our own personal die that we’re born with, and that die has like 20, 50, 100, or 1000 faces on it. Some of those faces are pink and some are blue, and when we conceive a baby, we roll that die and whatever color comes up on top is the gender we conceive.

Each of the faces on the die corresponds to a different thing that can affect gender. Almost certainly, genetics play a part in gender selection, so some of the faces on the die are colored pink or blue and we cannot change them, these are just traits we are born with. Some people probably have more unchangeable blue faces, some have more unchangeable pink faces, and other people have an equal number of each. It even seems possible that some people have more unchangeable faces overall than others do, and their bodies may just be more hardwired to produce children of mostly one gender than another person’s would be.

But other sides of the die do change color. They flip back and forth depending on variables in our diet, timing, and environment. Sometimes we have more pink faces on our die, and sometimes more blue faces. These are what we are aiming at changing when we sway, to get as many faces as we can to turn pink or blue and keep them there as long as we can while we roll the die.

Some of these faces are easily changed, others are much tougher. Some of the faces are linked together, so changing several at the same time works much better than trying to do only one. In fact, the only way to change some of the faces is by changing enough of the others. Other faces are easy for one person to change but more difficult for others, probably due to genetic factors.

Unfortunately, since we are all born with different dice, we don’t know exactly if what works for one person will always work for another. All we can do is look at what seems to work best for the majority of people over the course of time, and try and emulate that.

Even after the best sway imaginable, there is no way that all of our die’s faces will be pink or blue. There are some faces that are unchangeable, and others that were just too difficult, and still others that we don‘t even know how to change yet. We can do our best to change as many as we can, but there will be at least some chance that the opposite color will come up when we roll. Even if we changed ¾ of our faces pink, ¼ will still be blue. Even in people who are ¾ pink will have boys ¼ of the time.

Most of us only roll our die only 2 or 3 times over the course of our lives. It isn’t hard to imagine that just from sheer bad luck, that some of us will happen to have more blue or pink faces during those times, even if every other month out of our life we had more of the opposite. For others, they may be in that ¼ who rolls blue even though their odds were mostly pink.

You just can’t predict by looking at one or two people, what things work best to sway. Because yes, your friend may eat lots of salt and have girls, but she may have so many other pink factors that her overall pink odds were still higher. Or for me personally, I DTD before I ovulated, so according to Shettles, I should have daughters. I don’t, but that doesn‘t mean that Shettles is completely wrong in every way and that timing doesn‘t matter. I simply had more blue factors than I did pink those months, and my roll came up blue.

Only over the course of time, and by watching a lot of people sway (both successes and failures), will we gradually be able to learn what things work best and for who. Until then, we have to accept that there will be exceptions, there will be opposites, and even though there are failed sways, it doesn’t mean that we should give up on swaying and refuse to even try.

Abbreviation Translation!

If you are a newer member and you feel like you suddenly landed in a vat of alphabet soup, this thread may help you! (Thanks to my old friend Maureen for compiling the original list that this is based on.)

FAMILY

DH – Dear husband or darling husband

DP, SO Dancing Partner or Significant Other . Usually means unmarried partner.

DD, DS = Darling Daughter or Son

DSD or DSD = Darling Stepdaughter or Stepson

DN = Niece or nephew

MIL, FIL, BIL, SIL = The in-laws: mother, father, brother, sister

SAHM, SAHD = Stay at home mom or dad

WAHM, WAHD = work at home mom or dad

LO - little ones

FOAF - Friend of a friend - meaning you heard a story about someone somewhere but it's not someone you actually know firsthand.

SEX AND CONCEPTION

TTC = Trying to conceive (trying to get pregnant)

BD = Baby Dancing (sex to get pregnant)

DTD = Did The Deed or Doing The Dance (had sex, either to get pregnant or just for recreational purposes)

Pg = Pregnant

BC, BCP = Birth control, Birth control pill

TPFS - Three Primary Fertility Signs - http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...osition-and-CM)

HT - High Tech

MS - Microsort OR Morning Sickness

IVF/PGD - InVitro Fertilization and Preimplantation genetic diagnosis

OHW - One Hit Wonder - someone who gets pregnant their first round of high tech or first month swaying

Monthly Cycle and Gross Bodily Functions

VJJ - Vajayjay or vagina

O = Ovulation or orgasm (orgasm is usually “big O”) You typically can tell from context which O is the O in question.

AF = Aunt Flo (“flow”) = menstruation, getting your period

CD = cycle day. The day you start your period is cycle day 1.

CB = Cycle Buddy. Person in the same part of cycle as yourself.

DPO = Days Past Ovulation

DBO - Days Before Ovulation

CM or CF = cervical mucus or cervical fluid, the fluid that normally comes out of the vagina during the fertile part of your cycle

EWCM = Egg White Cervical Mucus. The most fertile CM; clear and slippery like egg white.

CP = cervical position

SHOW - Soft, high, open, and wet - describes your cervix at ovulation.

BBT = Basal Body Temperature. Method for detecting ovulation.

OPK = Ovulation Prediction Kit

POAS = Pee on a stick (to test for pregnancy or ovulation)

TCOYF = Taking Charge of Your Fertility book

FF - Fertility Friends - a website where you can chart your cycle

BM - bowel movement

Pregnancy Testing

2WW = Two week wait. After trying to get pregnant, waiting to test.

HPT = Home Pregnancy Test

BFP = Big Fat Positive (positive pregnancy test)

BFN = Big Fat Negative (negative pregnancy test)

hCG = Human chorionic gonodotropin. Substance detected by pregnancy tests.

Beta = blood test for pregnancy

FMU - First morning urine...when you take an early pregnancy test you should always use your first morning urine because it's more concentrated.

POAS - Pee on a stick (take a pregnancy test)

PUPO - Pregnant until proven otherwise...you haven't gotten a BFP or a BFN, but until you do, you're not doing anything that might jeopardize a potential pregnancy.

Pregnancy and Nursing

EDD = Estimated Due Date

U/S = Ultrasound

CVS = Chorionic Villae Sampling. Test during pregnancy to check baby’s chromosomes; also determines sex.

BF = Breast feeding

BB = boobies (breasts)

MC or m/c = Miscarriage

Expressions

24-7 - doing something 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

KWIM = Know what I mean?

IYKYWIM - I know you know what I mean - when you're talking to someone you know has experienced the same situation

BTW = By the way

IRL = In Real Life

FWIW - For what it's worth

OMG - Oh my Gosh!

GD = Gender Disappointment OR Gender Dreaming website!

PP = Previous poster. Someone who commented earlier on the current thread and I can't remember their username right now.

OP - Original poster. The person who started the thread.

GMTA = Great minds think alike

H&H = Happy and healthy (usually used to wish someone success in pregnancy)

HTH = Hope that helps!

ITA = I totally agree

IMHO = In my humble opinion (or IMO in my opinion)

LOL = Laughing out loud

ROFL = Rolling on floor laughing

LMAO = Laughing my ass off!

TTFN = Ta ta for now

AFAIK = As far as I know

BTDT = Been there, done that

DHAC = Don’t have a clue

FWIW = For what it’s worth

OT = Off Topic

IK,R - I know, right??

PITA = Pain in the ass

GL - Good Luck

KUP - Keep us posted!

TY and TIA - Thank you and Thanks in advance

KFX, FX and TX - Keeping fingers crossed, fingers crossed, and toes crossed

WTH or WTF - What the heck or what the F...

FML - F... my life, a statement of intense frustration

P and PT - prayers and positive thoughts

FB - Facebook

Swaying

TBM = “Turkey Baster Method” = self insemination

O+12 = 12 hours after ovulation

RE = Reproductive endocrinologist. Certification for fertility doctor. Not all fertility doctors are RE's.

J&D - Jump and Dump

MSU = Modified Swim-Up - an at home high tech method that we don't do on this site but I can answer basic questions and help you find someone who does.

EGS - Extreme gender swaying - at home high tech, we don't do that on this site but I can answer basic questions and help you find someone who does

BS - Baking soda

BSD = Baking Soda Drink or Douche

BSF = Baking Soda Finger

ASG - Alka-Selzer Gold

COT - Cream of Tartar (drink for blue swayers)

ACV - Apple Cider Vinegar

V-8 - This means V-8 juice which you may or may not have in your country. It's tomato juice with other vegetable juices mixed in and is great for conceiving boys.

High or low T - high or low testosterone. Also raise or lower T. T is testosterone levels. (note - HT means "high tech")

BGL - Blood glucose levels (I need to start using this one more!!) or blood sugar.

NYF and BY - Nutritional Yeast Flakes and Brewer's yeast.

Prog Cream - progesterone cream

UHT milk - shelf-stable milk that does not need refrigeration

FGD - French Gender Diet

MINERALS, HERBS, and VITAMINS

Supps - supplements, generic term for all the pills you're popping

AF-O, O-AF - Some supplements should only be taken from menstruation (AF) through ovulation (O) because they are not safe for a potential conception. Other things are started after ovulation and stopped at menstruation.

EPO - Evening primrose oil

SP - Saw Palmetto

TT - tribulus terrestris

FUR - False Unicorn Root

CLO and FO - Cod liver oil and fish oil

Soy Iso - Soy isoflavones

RL and RLT - Raspberry Leaf, Raspberry Leaf Tea

PT - Peppermint Tea
Ca - Calcium
Na - Sodium
K - potassium
Mg - Magnesium

The Kitchen Sink, the Mellow Yellow, the Do-Nothing, and the 80-20 rule of swaying! (original here: http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...e-swaying.html)

I thought it might be helpful to talk a bit about different swaying strategies.

What is right for one person may not be right for another. There is no one size, fits all sway. I think there's room for lots of different sways and that first and foremost we must do what is right for ourselves, our families, and our marital relationships.

Things to consider before entering into any sway -

How important is it for me to conceive a child of a particular gender? Will I be devasted if I conceive an opposite? Should I be looking into HT?

How solid is my relationship? How much swaying is my husband willing to put up with? Could I cause permanent damage by pressuring him to do things he is uncomfortable with? Is HE the one who wants a child of a particular gender or will swaying potentially put him off the idea of another child all together?

What kind of time parameters are we dealing with? Are we in a rush due to age, our desired family makeup and child spacing, or career issues?

What is our fertility status to begin with? Are we in our late 30's? Does my husband have lower sperm count? Am I healthy or do I have any sicknesses that require strict dietary guidelines that I should not deviate from?

What will our next step be if this sway fails? Would we do HT if that happens? If so, wouldn't it be more sensible just to go HT NOW rather than waiting several years if we conceive an opposite? (the older you get, the less chance you have at successfully going HT so it is better to try HT first if you can) Would we have another child? Do we even want another child if we fail? Is this my last shot at my DG?

Will this ruin me if it goes bad? Will swaying take over my life? Am I the obsessive type? Will swaying actually hurt worse than doing nothing if I get an opposite, or will I at least feel like I tried?

Thinking about those questions may help clarify what your hopes and expectations are for swaying and it may become apparent what strategy is right for you.

FIRST AND FOREMOST WHEN SWAYING - If you don't get pregnant, you have NO chance of your DG.

The "Kitchen Sink" sway - Forget everything but the kitchen sink, you want to throw the sink in there too!

IF you are someone who really, truly feel that you MUST have a child of a particular gender and really truly cannot go HT, and if, as my friend Tamara said once, you are willing to go from now until menopause getting nothing but BFN's, then this approach may be for you. You will want to do and try everything even if it drastically reduces your odds of pregancy. This is particularly true for pink swayers because a lot of stuff we do for pink lowers the odds of pregnancy.

You will need a husband who is very supportive and not to have any time constraints (as in, if your husband is stationed overseas and only home for three months, this is NOT the approach you should take.) You need patience and nerves of steel because once those BFN's start piling up, a lot of people lose heart and are inclined to give up. And the longer you sway, the more likely it is that you will give up on things that are hard to stick to, like diet.

Caveat - This approach is poison for people who tend to get very obsessive and worked up about things. Not only does it have the potential to raise testosterone levels, but they tend to add more and more to their sway until one day they snap and give up on swaying all together. Even for blue swayers this can be dicey because in some people, chronic long-term anxiety may supress testosterone and end up swaying pink! Sometimes you just can't win!

It's also harder for many people if their sway fails, because not only did they feel that they had a guarantee because they had done everything, but they also may feel like they tried so hard and blame themselves for the three chocolate chips they ate in October.

The "Mellow Yellow" - If it feels good, do it. Pick and choose the things that feel right to you and leave the rest of it in God's hands because that's probably where it is anyway.

If your husband isn't supportive, no worries, just leave the husband stuff out of it. Some things may lower your odds of pregnancy esp. if you're swaying pink.

I want to pause for a second here to introduce one of the most fundamental rules of both swaying and life in general - the 80-20 rule. "You get 80% of the results with 20% of the effort, but to get that last 20% of the results, you will have to expend 80% of the effort to get it."

In other words, you can still have a damn fine sway without worrying about every last detail, and for pink it may even be a finer sway because you aren't at quite as high a risk the bump in testosterone that can happen when you tackle a big, involved project (still some risk of that, though)

This is better for people who are in a hurry to get pregnant but not completely.

Caveat - This is probably not going to be as 'perfect' a sway as a Kitchen Sink sway. If you do end up conceiving an opposite, you may have regrets that you didn't do this or that, and I have seen some women blame their husbands for not wanting to go along with certain aspects of swaying.

The Do-Nothing - NOT swaying and just TTC, is always an option. The vast majority of babies of either gender that have ever been conceived on the face of the planet were born to parents who had never heard the word swaying other than the wind through the trees. For most of us, if we keep having children (aka "Duggaring-it-out) we will end up conceiving an opposite just by getting pregnant again.

There is a lot less risk of raising your testosterone levels with this method. It's perfect for people who are in a hurry to get pregnant because there is no preparation required. And it may be best for people who find they get very worked up and stressed when they consider swaying.

Caveat - You may be inadvertently be doing things that sway strongly one direction without intending to, so if you just TTC again without changing those things, you run the risk of just conceiving a child of the same gender as you
already have. (Of course if you want another child of the same gender, don't mess with success!) Also, you may have regrets later on if you conceive an opposite.

The Advanced Do-Nothing - IF you're a woman who tends to get very worked up and stressed out about things AND you have a supportive husband, the option exists that he can surprise you with a sudden attempt one day!

Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I can envision a husband that does all the research, quietly monitors his wife's cycle (or helps her chart as some DH's do) and just arrives in the bedroom one night with a bottle of wine, a tube of Sylk or Pre-Seed, maybe an antihistamine or Robitussin, gives his wife a blissful backrub and lets nature take its course!

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...your-sway.html
Beyond the cookie cutter - Personalizing your sway

On this site, there is no cookie-cutter, everyone-must-do-this-or-else sway - you are free to pick and choose the sway tactics that you feel are right for YOU. But, the sheer amount of info presented all at once does make it seem rather daunting to people and it probably comes off that we are suggesting you do EVERYTHING. So NBP suggested that we come up with some simplified suggestions - examples, or templates - of sways that a person might want to make their own. You don’t have to do ANY of these sways, there is no one size, fits all sway and no right or wrong way to sway.

For starters, you might want to read the following to help you determine what your sway strategy is.
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...ule-of-swaying!

Before you begin to plan your sway, you should stop to consider how swaying will affect your odds of pregnancy. It does you no good to sway if you sway so hard that you have no chance of getting pregnant; you have NO chance of your desired gender if you cannot even conceive. And the longer you go on getting BFNs month after month, the more likely it is that you will begin to drop things - unfortunately, the things that get dropped first tend to be the things that are hardest to stick to and yet have the most scientific evidence backing them up, like diet. Some people are willing to go on from now until menopause getting nothing but BFNs but for most people, it seems much wiser to me to hit it hard and get it over with quick! You know yourself best, so be honest with yourself about what is realistic for you.

A reminder - you should start ANY diet 6 weeks (long enough to control blood sugar, CM, pH, minerals, and somewhat affect testosterone) to 90 days (if you want to sway for the entire life cycle of an egg, and is better for raising/lowering testosterone) before you TTC.

You and DH MUST quit smoking if you want a son, no ifs, ands, or buts, that one is non-negotiable.

DO NOTHING SWAY - Seriously, for reals. You can Duggar-it-out and decide that you‘ll just keep having kids until you get your DG. People get their desired gender every day by doing nothing any different than they have any day of their lives. Luck and chemistry may be on your side this time and it may be that all you need to do is just get pregnant. This is statistically more true for moms who want sons than it is for moms who want daughters because your odds of a boy go up after 3 girls. However, advancing maternal age does make you more likely to conceive a daughter so if you‘re in your late 30‘s your odds of a girl are better. (you can still conceive a boy - or two - in your late 30’s!!!! BELIEVE ME!! LOL!!!!)

LITE SWAY - Diet has far and away the most evidence supporting it BUT some people find it very difficult to stick to. A person might decide to sway using just timing, jelly, timing, hormonal supplements, lowering/raising sperm count - any or all combo of other sway tactics. It’s ok if you want to do that. The only thing that I STRONGLY suggest for pink swayers is not to just take cal-mag supplements alongside your normal diet, and I do believe equally strongly that blue swayers MUST not be dieting and/or losing weight.

FRENCH LITE SWAY - Some think the French Gender diet (available in the Dream Members section) is the easiest diet to stick to, so adding the FGD to a Lite Sway is a good way to incorporate some diet into your sway. (Or, you could also JUST do the FGD and forget the rest.) Pink Swayers, I STRONGLY urge you do do the FGD itself and not just take supplements in addition to eating your normal diet (even if you ease back on sodium), because it is not clear whether the cal-mag aspect of the FGD is what sways, or if it is due to the restrictive, lower-protein nature of the diet.

VEGGIE LITE SWAY FOR PINK - Being a vegetarian or vegan is proven to sway pink, and many find a plant-based diet easy to stick to. Adding a vegetarian/vegan diet to a Lite Sway, or even just doing diet and forgoing other sway techniques, is a valid strategy for pink. You CAN add cal-mag supps to a vegetarian/vegan diet and perhaps enhance your sway by incorporating French gender minerals.

CAVEMAN LITE SWAY FOR BLUE - A caveman-style, meat, eggs, nuts, fruit and veg diet (limiting refined carbohydrates and dairy) may sway blue and you may wish to combine it with the Lite Sway tactics and the mineral component of the FGD, increasing sodium and potassium intake, for a more thorough sway. Also a good choice for those blue swayers with uncooperative husbands, because most husbands LOVE caveman-style diets.

ATOMIC’S PREFERRED SWAY - You’ll get most of the benefits of a more thorough sway AND you’ll be able to get pg quickly. Eat the “Low-Everything” diet for pink, “High-Everything”diet for blue (WITHOUT worrying about minerals or acidity/alkalinity of food) These diets are available in the Dream Members section. Lose 3-5 pounds for TTC pink and gain a few pounds of muscle for TTC blue.

For pink, abstain/frequent release with a short cutoff. Do not exercise at all. Skip breakfast, but otherwise only worry about blood glucose levels right before ovulation and during the 2WW. Take vitex and folic acid but NO other vitamin supplements. Take an antihistamine. I personally prefer that you not worry too much about timing because it doesn’t sway much and it raises testosterone - get pregnant as quick as you can to limit the amount of time you have to stick to the diet.

For blue, Pre-Seed, Robitussin/Mucinex and sperm-enhancing supplements and BD patterns for blue, and timing ONLY if you absolutely must. Exercise or not, whatever you prefer, as long as you are not a habitual over-exerciser (but lifting weights will REALLY help your sway). Take any supps that boost egg/sperm quality that you feel comfortable with and a wide array of vitamin and nutrient supplements. Green tea, wheatgrass, gelatin drink, and lemon water are all safe to use. Use timing if you like but I prefer that you use Deanna’s Plan in order to up your odds of pregnancy.

THE DELUXE PACKAGE - This is the sway that I, atomic sagebrush, believe to be the most effective and thorough. With the exception of the minerals, because I'm not convinced the minerals sway in the way that people claim, may even sway in the wrong direction for some people, and I would LOVE it if minerals just quietly went away. And I did include timing altho I don't think it sways. But the majority of people want to include them and I understand that.

However, the Deluxe sway probably does cut down on your fertility somewhat and people find it difficult to stick to. Pink swayers, if you find yourself getting obsessed with swaying and feeling that you MUST do everything, STOP and regroup. Blue swayers, if you are feeling overwhelmed, take a break!!!

For pink, the Low Everything diet plus minerals plus aspartame, limiting alkaline foods, taking cran or baby aspirin, and strictly limiting blood sugar all the time. Lose 5-7 pounds if at all possible, and do intense cardio exercise 6-7 days a week. Use RepHresh, abstain/frequent release, with a cutoff. If you can beg, borrow, or steal some Clomid, USE it. (not really, only use Clomid under the supervision of a doctor. ) If you can’t get Clomid, use vitex and saw palmetto. DH should use licorice root.

For blue, High Everything diet, cut way back on cal-mag if you‘re not already and up sodium/potassium intake, limit acidic foods, use stevia as a sweetener, and do the BSD or Ural drinks. Use egg white rather than Pre-Seed. (please note, cutting back drastically on cal-mag while increasing sodium, is not necessarily the best thing for fertility. And if you are of sub-Saharan African (Black) descent, you should not increase your sodium intake because virtually all Black people have genes that cause them to retain high levels of sodium in their bodies and the sodium is risky for you.)

THE WHOLE NINE YARDS SWAY - The Deluxe Package plus spermicide and adding an O+12 attempt for pink (or you could do O+12 instead of cutoff). Use Acijel/Replens instead of RepHresh if you are going to do O+12. TTC pink from Mar-May only. DH should wear tighty-whiteys, take hot baths, and may even want to bicycle or run a lot. He may also wish to take Sudafed.

For blue, the Deluxe Package plus BSF and ONLY one attempt 12 hours after your positive OPK. TTC blue from Sept-Nov. only.

NOTE - if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, reverse the suggested months to TTC (so TTC blue Mar-May and pink Sept-Nov) and if you are near the equator, don’t worry about months at all because the day length doesn’t vary enough to send a signal to your body.

THE WHOLE TEN YARDS SWAY - Add douching for both pink and blue.

Custom Sway Plan FAQ (original here:) http://genderdreaming.com/forum/have...-plan-faq.html

Hi!

What IS a GenderDreaming Custom Sway Plan?

The Custom Sway Plan is a plan designed for you by atomic sagebrush. She takes into account your ages, body type, fertility, lifestyle, preferred sway tactics, etc. and researches thoroughly any health issues you have and medications you may be on, and then designs a plan accordingly.

The TTC pink plans are on average 12 pages long, and the TTC boy plans are on average 16 pages long. They are for both DH and DW. They cover supps (with dosage) and various beverages; diet, blood sugar, and weight loss/gain guidance; exercise and other lifestyle advice; techniques to control CM and pH; lowering and raising sperm count; frequency and when to DTD; and then a schedule that tells you when to do everything you need to do.

In addition to the plan itself, you get access to your own private forum for 6 months where atomic acts as your personal sway coach and answers every question you have. Your questions are answered first and atomic tries to answer q's in the private forums 2-3 times a day, so you typically never have to go more than 24 hours without an answer.

So I get a bunch of secret insider info, right?

No, all the sway info is exactly the same as is available elsewhere on the site. We at GenderDreaming are committed to keeping sway info free to all and that will always stay the same. The only thing that is restricted (to Dream Members) is the LE/HE Diet info, and that is only because there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there who sell sway diets for hundreds of dollars and atomic doesn't want to make their jobs any easier.

Do I get a customized diet with that?


You get access to a 5-day sample diet and then as a part of the coaching, atomic helps you plan out your diet using foods that you like and are familiar with that are easily available in your neck of the woods. If you don't know much about nutrition, don't panic, you don’t need to. And if over time you start getting sick of some foods you were eating, you have the flexibility to change it up at any time and atomic is always available to go over your foods and diet to see if it's appropriate for you.

You also get a downloadable and printable version of the HE/LE Diet and shopping list for pink/blue.

Do I get Dream Membership?


Dream Membership is separate from the Custom Sway Plans. If you don't want to purchase a Dream Membership, that's ok, atomic has access to all the DM info, of course, and you get atomic as your sway coach. The Dream Membership is nice though because you can chat privately with your fellow swayers secure in the knowledge that friends and relatives can't see your posts.

Do I get my money back if I get an opposite?


We don't offer that option. The money is for atomic's time and effort, not a guarantee of gender in any way. Swaying is not a sure thing and opposites are always possible with even the best of sways.

Well if I don't get all those things and all the info is free anyway, why should I bother getting a sway plan at all?

Not everyone has time to do all the research required to make their own plan. The Custom Sway Plans are ideal for working moms or anyone who is busy or not interested in doing a lot of research into swaying.

Also, if you're not a detail-oriented person and the idea of spending hours reading and planning a sway feels scary or overwhelming to you...or for you boy moms out there, if you ARE detail-oriented person and are worried that getting too swaycessed will cause your T levels to skyrocket...in either case a Custom Plan may be right for you.

Aside from that, the Custom Sway Plans and the Dream Memberships help to keep the site going (without ads!!) and allows atomic sagebrush to help people with swaying as a job rather than working outside the home. (Thank you!! )

How long does it take and how will I get it?


The plans take about a week to finish, give or take a day or two. (Note from atomic - Believe it or not, my children's sleep habits are the main consideration because I like to be able to really focus on the plans when I do them. If you wonder why I'm answering questions and not doing your plan, it's because my children are awake and I want to give your plan my full concentration.)

If you need a plan right away for some reason, let atomic know and she can adjust her schedule accordingly. She will also answer any questions you have right away as soon as you buy the plan - you don't need to wait for your plan.

After you purchase your plan you will have access to a couple of questionnaires. The info you supply will help atomic first with your sway plan, then in an ongoing fashion over the next 6 months while she helps with your sway.

You will get your plan in your own private forum. You can post your questions in that forum or send to atomic via PM. Keeping your questions in your forum can be handy for both you and atomic to have access to all your info under one "roof" so to speak, but whatever is convenient for you is fine!

Can other people see my private forum?


The forums are totally private, only you, atomic, and nuthinbutpink (she handles the technical issues with the site and doesn't answer sway questions) can see them.

What happens after 6 months?


After 6 months, your private forum goes away if you don't need it any more (we save the data in case you do want to renew in the future). Atomic's goal is to have all swayers pg within 6 months anyway. You are always welcome to renew your plan if you like!!

Also, if your circumstances change and you need a new plan, as long as your forum is active, atomic will redesign your plan free of charge.

How far in advance of my sway should I purchase my plan?

For the average person, it typically takes about 3 months of planning and 3 months of swaying, which is how the 6 month figure was calculated.

Some people are thinking of swaying some time in advance and want to know when to purchase a plan. That is really up to you. If it gives you some peace of mind to have a plan in hand a long time in advance, then it makes sense to buy a plan even if you're not going to sway for a year - you can get all the details ironed out with atomic and even work out your diet, then wait until you're ready.

Also, if you have free time at present and expect to be busy in the future, it can be a good idea to have your plan and get all your q's answered while you have time to focus on swaying. We have had students buy plans while on break from classes and pregnant ladies buy plans before their new babies came.

And if your circumstances change, as long as your forum is active (or you renew when you're ready to sway) atomic will redesign your plan free of charge.

Wait a minute, I just came from IG and everything in my plan is DIFFERENT!?! What gives?

A few people have had the expectation that the info on this site and IG will be identical. We have a different take on a lot of things and you can read about that here: IG vs. GD swaying? What's the difference? And who is this Atomic Sagebrush, anyway??. That having been said, atomic is also well versed in the IG-style sway and was actually forum mod on IG for a while, so if you would prefer to include any/all IG "factors" in your sway, please just let her know and she can include those in your plan. She will probably make you read the other side of the story, but at the end of it all, it's YOUR sway and we're like Burger King - you can have it your way! (as long as it's safe, that is.)

The GenderDreaming info all hangs together logically, even though it does contradict that given on other sites at times. The goal of GenderDreaming swaying, including our Custom Sway Plans, is a safe, sane, science-based, and effective sway that you and your husband will actually be HAPPY doing. If at any point there is EVER anything in your sway that is confusing or seems to contradict any info you've read somewhere else, please just ask. Questions are always welcome and there is a reason for everything we recommend on this site.

Thanks so much for considering purchasing a sway plan!

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...s-swaying.html
The MOST dangerous things for swaying

That you should never ever do or I will come to your house and give you a stern talking-to!!!

IF you or DH have any major health conditions, you need to put your health first and not do anything that can jeopardize that. Examples of health conditions that might be negatively affected by certain aspects of swaying include high blood pressure, diabetes or prediabetes, hyper/hypoglycemia, thyroid problems. If you are on any medications, make double and triple sure that they do not interact with any aspects of the swaying diets or supplements - and do this FOR YOURSELF, don't rely on me or Tamara or anyone else to do it for you, because we make mistakes!!!!

DO NOT do at home IUI. Yes, they do sell kits to do it online but do not put ANYTHING into your uterus. You can get an infection that can kill you or leave you infertile. In fact, stay away from your cervix all together - you do not need and should NOT reach a finger into your cervix to try and pull it open to test pH. Regardless of who tells you to do this, DON'T.

Douching has been linked to more ectopic pregnancies - this is almost 100% certainly as a result of increased infections (the kind you are trying to avoid by not doing at-home IUI and messing with your cervix) and not douching itself BUT just so you all are aware of the risk. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...=douching+safe

DON'T take big handfuls of pills all at once and never swallow pills without water to wash them down with. They can get lodged in your throat and cause an ulcer that can KILL you. If you ever feel like you have a pill stuck in your throat, try eating a piece of bread with water to wash it down and if it doesn't get unstuck very soon, see a doctor. This has actually happened to people.

DO NOT go over the amount listed on any supplement bottle. Not even if I, NBP, Tamara, the French Gender Diet people, Dr. Mercola, or anyone short of a medical doctor says it's ok (and even then, be skeptical). There are reasons why those limits are on the bottle and since each company formulates their pills a bit differently, it's best to follow their directions. Also be aware the differences between IU, mg, UG, mcg, g, DV - these are NOT equivalent measures and you need to be well aware how much you are taking.

NEVER quit taking any vitamins/minerals cold turkey ESPECIALLY when pregnant. Slowly taper off over the course of a few weeks, either by taking smaller doses or by spacing your doses farther and farther apart. Any advice you read to "save money" by not taking vitamins/minerals during the 2WW is bad for your sway and bad for your body too. It is safe to stop taking SOME of the hormonal supps cold turkey, however, and in fact they work best taken that way.

It's best to only ever start taking vitamins and minerals in amounts that are safe during pregnancy so you never have to even deal with it. Make very sure of each supp you are taking to see whether they are safe during the 2WW. Not safe during the 2WW - cranberry, saw palmetto, Lydia Pinkham, licorice/white peony, baking soda, vitex, and MANY other things are not safe during the 2WW. Always double check.

Some supps are especially important to wean off of slowly - folic acid (which should be taken throughout the first trimester anyway), B6, baby aspirin should all be weaned off slowly rather than just stopped. Progesterone cream (which you probably shouldn't even mess around with unless you NEED it) MUST be continued throughout the first trimester of pregnancy EVERY DAY or you risk having a miscarriage.

PLEASE PLEASE take a pregnancy test EVERY MONTH even if you are 100% sure you are not pregnant, before starting up your AF-O supps. You CAN have what seems like a normal AF and still be pregnant the entire time - this has actually happened to real live smart people and not just goofballs on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant." It happened to me - I miscarried a twin, thought it was AF and swayed for weeks afterwards on a strict diet and vitex while pregnant and only by the grace of God is my baby healthy.

Some supplements are NOT SAFE to take when breastfeeding. Saw Palmetto, cranberry, baby aspirin, among others. If you are swaying while breastfeeding, please be sane about what you put into your body and don't go overboard on any swaying supplements.

NO MATTER WHAT, TAKE FOLIC ACID.

Messing around too much with your potassium levels is DANGEROUS, either too much or too little can stop your heart and kill you. It is very easy to get potassium through diet and your body can tolerate it when you're getting it in foods, so please think long and hard before deciding to take potassium supps. You probably don't even need them for a blue sway because so many of the blue-friendly foods. Cream of Tartar IS potassium so take that into account. One of the side effects of taking potassium is that your body starts getting rid of LOTS of potassium (and this is especially true if your magnesium levels are low, as inm, blue swayers.) So if you are taking potassium supps and are now panicking and planning to quit taking them, taper yourself off slowly over a period of weeks. You can inadvertently become dangerously low by suddenly stopping potassium.

Too much cranberry - this seems different for each person, too much causes bleeding/bruising and headaches, and can trigger bleeding in the stomach and brain that can kill you.

Too much calcium (more than 3000 mg diet and supps combined - and even this is a heck of a lot of calcium - aim for 1200-1800 mg and that's ALL) If you take Tums for calcium, you run the risk of giving yourself "rebound acid reflux" where your body begins to overproduce stomach acid to make up for the alkalinity of the Tums.

Too much magnesium - It can KILL you. Magnesium through diet doesn't seem to have this effect, only when taken as supplements. No more than 300 mg magnesium! And if you notice diarrhea at that level, cut back on it even more. (IG has magnesium listed as safe up to 600 mg in several places. This info is outdated and unfortunately did not get updated everywhere. A lady actually got really sick from too much magnesium.)

Too much caffeine. Don't use caffeine pills, you don't need them.

Too much WATER/liquid too quickly - you can die from drinking too much ESPECIALLY when playing around with your electrolytes. Please be sane. Peopel have totally died from this!!!

Too much copper - more than 3 mg a day will kill you. Sometimes this is found in vitamin/mineral blends so be on the lookout for it.

Too much zinc - again, this is found in multivitamins and some fertility aids, so watch out for a cumulative effect. The amount listed on IG is dangerously high. No more than 10-12 mg for DW and 20-25 at the very most for DH.

Too much Vitamin C - 2000-5000 mg can cause miscarriage and no one needs to take this much anyway.

Too much Vitamin A - Vitamin A through vegetables is safe, eat up!! But Vit. A through supplements should be kept well under the 100% suggested value because it can cause DEATH or BIRTH DEFECTS. Cod liver oil has Vit. A in it so you may want to watch out for it.

Vitamin D - Too much Vitamin D can make you really sick, although medical professionals are currently revising their recommendations upwards. For now, it's best to stay within the 100% DV of this vitamin unless advised otherwise by your doctor. Cod liver oil also has Vit. D.

Too much baking soda - more than 6 half teaspoons (meaning, a half-teaspoon 6 times for a total of 3 teaspoons or 3969 mg or 4 grams) including Alka-Selter, Ural, and any baking soda you absorb through your skin in a baking soda bath, a day, will KILL you. You do not need to be ingesting this much anyway, start with a very small amount and see if it raises your pH. If small doses work, there is NO NEED for megadoses. You also need to include the sodium content of baking soda into your day's salt and be careful not to get too much. Baking soda also has an antacid effect and can give you "rebound acid-reflux".

Mixing alfalfa and black/blue cohosh can cause liver damage. It's probably best to stay away from those cohoshes anyway because they are linked to all sorts of badness.

Both too much and too little sodium can cause health problems. Pink swayers, please eat at least 700-1000 mg of sodium and blue swayers please do not exceed 5000-6000 mg. Salt also depletes the body of folic acid, so please take extra folic acid when swaying blue. Anywhere between 2000-4000 mcg a day, split into several small dosages, will be absorbed best.

Be VERY careful when taking blood thinners. In the girl diet, cranberry and baby aspirin are blood thinners, and in the boy sway, garlic and fish oil are blood thinners. If you notice unusual bruising/bleeding, or if your periods get heavier, stop taking these things right away and reintroduce them very very slowly. They can cause bleeding in your stomach and brain and KILL you.

If you (or more likely, DH) are on prescription blood thinners DO NOT take any of these blood-thinning supps.

Sudafed SUCKS. It gives people a lot of side effects and antihistamines work just as well if not better. Plus, it ups your chances of strokes, especially in young women who were taking blood thinners at the same time!

Royal Jelly and Bee Pollen - If you have ANY type of allergies, either you yourself or anyone in your family, especially asthma or insect allergies, AVOID these supplements. You may be priming your body for a fatal allergic reaction. And if anyone you live with has a bee allergy, don't even bring them into your home. It's DANGEROUS. Also, if you're related to anyone with a nut allergy and you've never eaten a lot of nuts, you may want to stay away from them.

Licorice root can cause high blood pressure and erectile dysfunction. It has also been linked to birth defects when taken by women BUT that info is very tenative. Do not take licorice while breastfeeding.

Saw Palmetto can interact with a lot of different drugs (esp. anti-androgens) and may affect birth control pills and other hormonal drugs. It also affects cholesterol in a negative way. Do not take saw palmetto while breastfeeding.

Aspartame - There is a lot of info out there about the dangers of aspartame BUT the FDA says it's safe. However, if you have PKU DO NOT use aspartame in any form because you cannot digest it properly and it can make you and your unborn baby very sick.

Sugar Free Gum - Chewing sugar-free gum with Xylitol causes horrible diarrhea that can make your electrolytes get screwed up - since we're already playing with our electrolytes anyway, this can make us get really sick. As little as 10 pieces a day can cause diarrhea. In fact, all the artificial sweeteners that end in -ol can cause stomach upset when eaten in excess (and really you don't have to eat too much to get an upset stomach from it.)

Eating more than 2 servings of fish a week is not a good idea due to the mercury content. Unfortunately in the TTC Blue FAQ on InGender, there is a phrase that says something like, "Fish oil with mercury sways pink" but that DOES NOT mean that if you are a pink swayer, you should ingest mercury. Mercury in ANY amount is highly unsafe and causes severe birth defects. Minamata disease - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I would also stay well away from shellfish when TTC because it is the repository of agricultural runoff and other toxins. Pesticides and toxins in general sway pink, but that's not the kind of sway most of us are after.

There are other minerals that have been linked with more girl conceptions like boron, but the reason for this is because people (usually DH) are being POISONED by excessive amounts of these minerals, not because they are good for swaying. Don't mess around with any large doses of any minerals, regardless of things you may have read about gender ratio.

Going onto birth control pills for no reason other than to move your ovulation into the proper "moon phase" or any other reason having to do with swaying. BCP are not TicTacs, they come with their own set of risks that include strokes and fatal blood clots, and to use them to move your ovulation for a part of swaying that is totally unproven, is not a good idea.

Antibiotic abuse (a lot of people are not going to like me for this but oh well) If you NEED antibiotics because you have an infection and you want to time your sway to get pregnant while taking them (for blue), that is fine. But to abuse antibiotics, by using someone else's prescription, obtaining them through false pretenses, or taking them in doses/patterns other than they are supposed to be taken, for the purposes of swaying, is an AWFUL idea. Again, antibiotics are not TicTacs, they have side effects that can be fatal and they can ruin your health permanently. Not only that, but abusing antibiotics may affect every other person on the face of the planet by helping to create drug-resistant strains of bacteria. DON'T do it.

AND My humble opinion on two things that are often frowned upon...

Yes, smoking is REALLY REALLY BAD for you and it's HORRIBLE to smoke when pregnant or around children. It makes your eggs and sperm lower in quality and ups your risk of miscarriage and birth defects substantially. You should def. quit and the sooner the better. BUT if you or DH already smokes, the fact is that smoking DOES sway pink and it's proven that it does, esp. in DH. I'm certainly not saying anyone should take up smoking and if you do smoke, you should quit if you can and never smoke while pregnant or around your kids. It's obviously a really really super bad thing to do and it will kill you at some point in the future, but if you're doing it anyway...well, now you know how it sways.

Drinking - obviously drinking a lot DURING pregnancy is terrible and can cause serious problems with your baby BUT a drink here or there during swaying is safe and will not hurt you or your baby.

Diet options for swaying original here:http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...s-swaying.html

On this site, there is no "right" or "wrong" way to sway and no one "official" diet. We present data from various sources, and then it is up to each individual to make up their minds about what diet is best for them and what makes the most sense to them.

However, since some of these diets are a bit contradictory, it is leading to some confusion so let's do a quick comparison of the various diets (and a few other ones just for fun!)

1) The French Gender Diet - based on the idea that mineral ratios and not any other factors (cal/mag for girls, sodium and potassium for boys) sway gender. Somewhat restrictive. More info is available in these threads http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...t-Introduction and in the Dream Member Private forum (you must be a Dream Member to access this forum) http://genderdreaming.com/forum/foru...-PRIVATE-FORUM

2)The IG-Style diet: This diet is found on the In-Gender site at Trying to conceive a girl? Read this! .... Last updated 8/11 - In-Gender.com (for pink) and Trying to conceive a boy? Read this! ... Last updated 8/11 - In-Gender.com (for blue) It encorporates ideas from the French Gender Diet, the acid/alkaline diet, and a few other diets. It is highly restrictive and may be difficult for people to follow in the long term.

3)The Trivers-Willard-style diet or "High-Everything" for boys, "Low-Everything" for girls. This is based on the idea that when food is plentiful, your body is more likely to conceive a boy and when food is scarcer, you are more likely to conceive a girl. It is somewhat restrictive, but there is more flexibility to this diet than the others. Info about this diet is found here http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...ard-hypothesis
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...s-for-TTC-Pink (for pink) and http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...estions-Part-1 (for blue)

The complete High Everything, Low Everything Diets plus recipes, food guides, meal plans, etc are available for Dream Members - to become a Dream Member, scroll to the top of this page and click the big pink button!

ETA - I am actually making a 3rd diet now, called the "In-Betweeners" Diet, for pink swayers who don't want to cut back to the LE Diet, and for blue swayers who are vegetarians, but I haven't posted it yet.

4)Acid/Alkaline diet - based on the idea that being very acidic sways pink and being very alkaline sways blue. This is not a specific swaying diet but people have used it as part of a sway attempt (and the IG-style diet is partially based on this premise). Less restrictive than some of the other diets. Diets and info is available at many places online but here are a few to start with Alkaline Foods & Alkaline Diet http://www.energiseforlife.com/wordp...et-simplified/ http://altmedicine.about.com/od/popu...kalinediet.htm

5)Vegetarian/Vegan for TTC pink - A vegetarian/vegan diet seems to sway pink - although this is not a swaying diet per se and it is very possible to conceive boys even if you are vegetarian, it may be a good choice for people who have a hard time sticking to other diets. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...for-more-girls

6) The Caveman or Paleolithic Diet for Blue -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet This is not a swaying diet per se, but is instead based on the idea that we should eat like our ancient ancestors, mostly meats and vegetables with little to no refined carbohydrates. http://www.cavemanpower.com/food/cav...ower_diet.html INTRODUCTION TO THE PALEOLITHIC DIET http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/pal...eodietfood.htm

7)Atkins, South Beach, and other low-carb diets - There have been mixed results with both boys and girls conceived while people were following these diets. Until more is known, it's probably best to avoid being on a very low-carb diet while TTC if for no other reason than it may not be safe for a baby.

8)General weight loss diets such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, etc. These have seemed to help some people sway pink. Weight loss and reducing calories does seem to help with a pink sway.

So how do you decide what diet is right for you? You will find foods that are ok on some diets that are not ok on others (don't panic, that doesn't mean that the diet doesn't sway, it may sway differently). Some have a lot of evidence to back them up and others have very little. One may just make "sense" to you on a gut level, when you think about how you ate before conceiving your other children. But most importantly you may find that one of the diets fits in better with your lifestyle than another does. If this is the case, then that's the diet for you. It does NO good killing yourself trying to follow a diet that you hate - either you'll cheat or you'll risk ruining your sway by increasing your stress level.

Not saying even a little bit that anyone should throw diet out the window when things get a little tough, because diet is one of the things that has the most evidence supporting it, but if you really truly find that you cannot follow the diet you are on, if it is ruining your life, your health, or giving you tons of stress and aggravation, it's time to stop and choose a new one.

There IS no one size, fits all swaying diet - both boys and girls have been conceived while their parents were eating a wide variety of food. It's my hope that everyone looks at the various diets and chooses the one that feels right for them. Please read http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...magic+foods%27 and http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...ule-of-swaying!

Complete guide to taking supplements!

I don't necessarily advise taking all these supps (esp. for a pink sway) but this is meant to be directions of HOW to take them for those who WANT to take them.

There is no hard and fast rule about the best time of day to take supplements. First and foremost, take them when it makes sense for you...if they make you sick in the morning, don't take them in the morning. If it's too much to remember the optimal times to take them, take them whenever it works for you. Many people find taking pills of any kind as part of a routine makes it easier to remember. If you always do the same things at the same time every day (like taking your child to preschool or the office coffee break) that's the perfect time for taking your supplements.

Supplements can cause stomach upset or a jittery feeling, especially when taken on an empty stomach. They're not always absorbed best when taken on an empty stomach anyway. For best results, take vitamins after eating a meal containing fat. (If you just ate a huge meal, sometimes it is really difficult to choke down a bunch of pills and water on top of that as I learned to my very great dismay )

Take supplements one at a time with a LOT of water. Resist the temptation to swallow a big handful of pills at once and if you ever have the feeling that they are lodged in your throat, try eating a piece of bread and butter to wash it down with. DON'T ignore this feeling, if it doesn't get better right away consult a doctor. On another website, a man gave himself a perforated esophagus by swallowing a bunch of vitamins dry - they got stuck and dissolved in his throat and ate through his esophagus.

Just to complicate matters, some foods can also interfere with/encourage absorption of some vitamins and mineral supplements. We'll take these special cases one at a time.

CALCIUMCalcium is best absorbed with acid. Either stomach acid (so take it after a meal, when your stomach is producing extra acid) or the acids in fruit juice. You also need to take magnesium (do not take more than 300 mg Magnesium in supplement form) and Vit. D for your body to best utilize calcium (This is for general health - for swaying, it's not entirely clear whether we want calcium to be absorbed into our bones or floating around in our system.)

Things that block the absorbtion of calcium include caffeine in coffee, tea, soft drinks; excessive protein, especially animal-based proteins; refined sugar and corn syrup; recreational drugs such as alcohol and cigarettes, too little or too much exercise; high salt diet; the Solanum genus of vegetables – tomatoes, potatoes, aubergines/eggplants, peppers - a chemical in them blocks calcium absorption.

FOLIC ACID and other B vitamins Of course, everyone swaying should take at minimum 400 mcg of folic acid. The B vitamins are water soluble vitamins and your body uses what it needs at the moment and excretes the rest. To get the most out of them, you should take smaller doses at several times during the day.

To best absorb B vitamins, you should take them along with Vit. C (see below) and with other B vitamins. Excess alcohol consumption and birth control pills can interfere with folic acid absorption, as can green tea and high salt intake. The TTC boy diet and baking soda drinks are particularly hard on your folic acid levels and ALL blue swayers should be taking extra folic acid - minimum of 2000 mcg.

VITAMIN C Another water-soluble vitamin that is excreted when taken in excess. For best results take smaller doses several times a day. Treat cranberry like Vitamin C.

POTASSIUMSince having too much (or too little) potassium can KILL you, it's probably best to get potassium primarily through diet. (potassium is in practially EVERYTHING but esp. fruits and vegetables) If you do want to take a little potassium, start very small (it is sold in dosages that are only 1-3% of the DMV for potassium. Take one with each meal and watch for any weird symptoms like diarrhea or arrhythmia. Salt, caffeine, antibiotics, and licorice can deplete your body of potassium, but still, it's best to just eat more fruits and vegetables rather than load up on potassium supplements.

IRONThis is not something we talk about a lot in swaying, but iron is a good part of a blue sway. You don't need to take extra iron, you can absorb it better through diet anyway and you will be eating extra red meat and fortified breakfast cereal Tannins in tea can block absorption of iron, as does caffeine, eggs, milk, and large amounts of fiber. Vitamin C enhances iron absorption, as do fermented foods. And of course the trusty ACV drink!!

HERBS I have no evidence to support this but I think the delicate compounds in herbs are probably more effective when taken on an empty
stomach if you can stand it.

This advice doesn't work as well for blue swayers because they need to be eating a lot all day long, but if you take the herbs with a snack rather than a meal, it may help.

FAT SOLUBLE VITAMINS Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat soluble - they can be stored in your fat and used whenever your body needs them, and are best absorbed with a meal that contains some fat in it. Vitamin A can actually be quite dangerous to take in supplement form, so it's much better to get Vit. A through diet (it's safe when eaten in food form). All yellow-orange fruits and vegetables contain some Vitamin A.

Vitamin D, most of us probably do not get anywhere near enough of, so it should be taken in supplement form. Research indicates you cannot OD on Vitamin D in anything less than 10,000 IU (which is a LOT of Vit. D). You should take your Vit. D with your biggest meal (with the most fat in it) for best absorption. For best results, also eat something with a lot of Vit. A in it, like carrots or V-8 juice.

Vit. E should be taken at the same time as Vit. D and also with a food that contains Vit. A like carrots or V-8 juice. You can get too much Vit. E, so stick to the government recommendations on that. If you are taking anything that thins your blood, such as aspirin, cranberry, garlic, fish oil, or prescription drug thinners, you should probably avoid Vit. E as it may cause bleeding.

Vit. K is actually manufactured by good bacteria that live in your intestines, so no need to take it. If you have recently taken antibiotics or even if you haven't, taking probiotics can help restore/maintain these helpful organisms. Take probiotics after eating because otherwise the acids in your stomach will kill most of them off.

Iron and fiber can block absorption of fat-soluble vitamins so be sure to take them at a different times of day.

OIL BASED SUPPLEMENTSFish oil, flaxseed, evening primrose oil, should be treated as fat soluble vitamins.

FIBER Blue swayers, if you choose to take fiber, do it first thing in the morning with a big glass of water and don't take it when you take any vitamins. Fiber doesn't seem to upset the stomach like other vitamins/minerals do. But you do not NEED to take fiber for your sway and you should be eating lots of fruits and vegetables and ample whole grains that will give you plenty of fiber anyway. You may want to time your intake of fat-soluble supplements at a time of day when you haven't eaten a large amount of fiber.

Pink swayers, you WANT the fiber to absorb and remove fat, so you should take a fiber supplement with every meal.

GRAPEFRUIT Grapefruit can interfere with the absorption of certain nutrients. So if you (blue swayers) are drinking grapefruit juice to increase CM, make sure you take it by itself.

PROTEINThis is not a supplement per se, but for blue swayers remember you are trying to up your protein intake. Protein is digested best when eaten in smallish amounts several times a day, because your body can only digest 30 grams or so at one meal. Break up your protein intake into several chunks and try to get as much in as you can.

Pink swayers should avoid protein and try to only eat about 40 grams a day.



Sample schedule for pink swayers - SKIP breakfast. Take 2-400 mcg of folic acid with or without other B vitamins. Take your herbs if you can stomach them without food. This is a good time of day to have some delectable Crystal Light as well.

With lunch, take cranberry/Vit C, 2-400 mcg folic acid, B complex, calcium/magnesium, Vit D (not saying you SHOULD take all these, just what the timing would be if you wanted to.). Probiotic after eating.

Midafternoon - more folic acid, B-complex, cran/Vit. C with snack if you absolutely must and fiber (taking the fiber at this point gives the Vit D. time to be digested without being absorbed by the fiber.)

With dinner, take FA, B, cranberry/Vit C, cal/mag and fiber.

Before bed, take another round of cranberry/vit C, FA/B, and then more herbs, then go to bed and sleep in case your stomach gets upset. The downside to this is that Vit C and B vitamins can make you a little wigged out and may make it hard to sleep - if this is true you will have to adjust to see what works best for you.

Sample schedule for blue swayers - With your hearty breakfast containing at least 30 grams of protein and some fat, you should take 400 mcg Folic Acid, a Vitamin D if desired, a tiny amount of potassium, and eat some fruits/vegetables that contain Vit. A. You can take Vit. C and B complex as well and ~I~ think blue swayers should take these, but some people think they sway pink.

Midmorning snack - 400 mcg FA and as much protein as you can. Eat another Vit. A rich fruit/vegetable or two. Vit C and B if desired. Take herbs here. This is also a great opportunity to try a brewer's yeast drink (brewer's yeast has protein and B vitamins and you can count this in your daily total)

Lunch - 30 grams protein, 400 mcg FA, and half your oily supplements. Vit. C and B if desired. Probiotic after eating. Tiny amount of potassium.

Midafternoon snack - as much protein as you can, 400 mcg Folic Acid, Vit. C and B if desired. Take herbs here. Brewer's yeast drink if you want.

Dinner - 30 grams protein, 400 mcg FA, the other half of the oily supplements. Vit. B and C if desired. Tiny amount of potassium.

These are just examples of plans that you can come up with, I hope everyone shares what has worked best for them!!!

ETA - When I mentioned above to eat "as much protein as you can" with your snacks, I don't mean eat unlimited protein, stick with the 30 grams or less. My point is that you don't HAVE to eat as much protein with snacks as you do with meals, you can eat less protein if you are not very hungry, just eat as much as you can within reason, without stuffing yourself, so if you ate 7 or 10 grams of protein, that's fine for a snack.

LINKS - http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_...ition/vitamins
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...3420#post13420

the seasons and swaying (original found here http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...s-swaying.html)

The idea that males are more fragile than females and therefore more of them are conceived because more are lost, is at the root of much of gender swaying. 140-160 males are conceived for every 100 females, falling to 106 boys born for every 100 girls.

Scientists have known for some time that rates of conception of children of BOTH genders seem to vary by season and that this phenomenon varies depending on location. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1323571?log$=activity http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/976725?log$=activity Changes in the seasonal distribution of births in G... [Hum Biol. 1981] - PubMed - NCBI Previous studies have indicated that in Western Europe, October is the easiest month for conceiving, and April is the most difficult. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense because babies conceived in the fall months are born in summertime when the livin' is easy, whereas babies conceived in spring are born in the darkest months of winter and in the native environment were probably less likely to survive. For the good of the species, some mechanism that encourages more babies to be born when food is plentiful and they have a greater chance of survival, has apparently evolved at some point.

Dr. Angelo Cagnacci, an Italian researcher at the Policlinico of Modena (and his research team) set out to investigate this phenomenon and discovered something really amazing. In a study of over 14,000 births, in the Modena, Italy area, not only were conception rates lowest in March-May and highest from Sept.-November as previous research had indicated, but the gender ratio shifted during those periods as well.

More girls were conceived in the low-conception months of March-May, peaking in April (the ratio was 487 boys to 513 girls) More boys were conceived in the high-conception months of Sept-Nov, peaking in October. (535 boys and 465 girls). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...for-girls.html Keeping in mind that virtually everything that reduces fertility seems to sway pink and virtually everything that increases fertility seems to sway blue, it would appear that there is some sort of natural seasonal variation in fertility that also acts to sway in some fashion.

Why, then, are any boys born in the wintertime at all? Imagine if you will, a sort of continuum of fertility. All of us fall somewhere along this continuum, some of us more fertile and some of us less fertile; some get pregnant just by walking past their husand in the hallway and others have to try for many months in order to conceive and then everyone else falls somewhere in between. Highly fertile couples can probably conceive a baby boy to be born in wintertime with no problem at all, whereas less fertile couples may only be able to conceive a boy to be born in summertime (of course there are SO MANY variables at play that this would just be an overall tendency and obviously there would be MANY exceptions, this description is just meant to help envision what the real-world applications of such a mechanism might be)

Using this information in swaying is a bit tricky, because the evidence indicates that where you live on Planet Earth affects this phenomenon. For reasons that we do not yet comprehend, more girls than would be statistically expected are born at the equator, and more boys at northern latitudes. http://knavara.myweb.uga.edu/Navara%202009.pdf Mother Nature seems to "time" conceptions in parts of the world that experience winter, so more male babies will be born in optimal conditions. If you live around the equator, this information may not apply to you.

Anyway, according to Cagnacci, the best conditions for conceiving a baby of ANY gender (and therefore, a boy) are a day length of 12 hours and an average temperature of 12°C. Maximum conception rates take place at opposite times in regions on either side of the equator. In the Southern Hemisphere (even though this has not been studied) it is predicted that the opposite trend would be true. Fewer babies (but more girls) should be conceived in Sept-November in the Southern Hemisphere, and more babies (and more boys) in March-May.

(BTW this is NOT what is predicted by the ion theory that is part of traditional swaying lore. The ion theory claims that winter conceptions should = more boys and summer conceptions should = more girls, and that spring and fall are neutral.)

Why might this be? Babies conceived Sept - Nov. will be born in the summer months when the climate is pleasant and food abundant, and babies that are conceived March - May will be born Dec-Feb, when temps are coldest and food is scarcest. Baby boys need more calories than baby girls throughout pregnancy and after birth, and in fact throughout LIFE. Average energy intake among pregnant women carrying a boy compared with a girl | BMJ (higher caloric needs during boy pregnancy) http://www.kidsandnutrition.co.uk/ho...hild-need.html (males have higher caloric needs throughout infancy and childhood)

As an example, the estimated average requirement for baby boys for their first 6 months of life is 545-690 calories per day, whereas baby girls require less, on average 515-645 kcal per day. It is not hard to imagine that it is easier for mothers to provide more nutrition via breastfeeding, to baby boys during times when food is ample - on a personal note, I often find I cannot even produce enough breastmilk without drinking three Dr. Peppers a day (at 150 calories a pop) in addition to eating a balanced diet, so it makes a lot of sense to me on a gut level that such a mechanism might evolve over millions of years. It's not only in the first few months that those early calories matter - if a baby boy is chronically undernourished during his first few months of life, even if he survives infancy he may be at a disadvantage for the rest of his life, and therefore be less likely to survive and reproduce.

Also, there may be another strange mechanism at play. Three studies I have found Ambient temperature predicts sex ratios and male longevity (here is a longer version of that same study http://precedings.nature.com/documen...20093915-1.pdf), Sex Ratios at Birth and Environmental Temperatures - Springer (abstract only), and Climatic factors and secondary sex ratio in dair... [J Dairy Sci. 2006] - PubMed - NCBI (somehow I have the full text of this article in my files but I can only find the abstract now, sorry!) both seem to indicate that cold temperatures at time of conception and in early pregnancy seem to mean more females conceived/born and warmer temperatures, even only just one degree warmer, raised the odds that a male would be conceived/born.

(Again, this completely flies in the face of the ion theory. According to the ion theory, boys "like" cold things and girls "like" warm things.)

However, this is confuddling because of the study that found more girls were born in tropical latitudes. http://knavara.myweb.uga.edu/Navara%202009.pdf I ~personally~ believe that this may have more to do with other factors such as diet and cultural issues - in fact, according to one study Project MUSE - Login Africa overall had more girls than would be statistically expected, even the nations that are far from the equator such (such as South Africa - sex ratio of 102 boys for 100 girls) and some equatorial nations had exactly as many boys as would be statistically expected (Nigeria 106 boys for 100 girls). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...s_by_sex_ratio

So glad I found this page :) thank you for all the info!

Lunaception
(original here) http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...naception.html

"Lunaception" is a term coined by author Louise Lacey in her 1974 book of the same name. Lacey (who freely admits she has NO scientific evidence to support the idea and that it is entirely based on "native wisdom" and anecdote) believes that the moon is capable of altering fertile patterns.

The theory is based on anthropological studies of various cultures that believed that menstruation was somehow tied to the moon. In fact, in many languages, the words for moon and menstruation are even based on common root words - in English, the word menstruation comes from the Latin word "mensis" meaning month, and the word "moon" also seems to stem from that same word (although the Latin word for moon is "luna" so the connection is hardly as straightforward as Lacey would have us think.)

The premise underlying Lunaception is actually quite intriguing. Prior to the invention of electricity, or even the discovery of fire (our ancestors lived for hundreds of millions of years sleeping outdoors without fire), our fertility evolved cyclically, governed by the natural rhythms of the earth, and some of these evolutionary anomalies are still alive and well within us. Much like a tailbone probably once supported tails we no longer grow, our bodies may have latent vestigial biorhythms that we aren't even aware of.

Lacey purports that most women experiences their menstrual cycles with the phases of the moon and at more or less the same time as other women. The idea of menstrual synchrony has been around since the early 70's - a couple of fairly decent studies seem to support the idea that women who live in close quarters with each other, start to ovulate and menstruate on or near to the same schedule. So whether or not the moon has anything to do with it, our tribal ancestors may very well have been all on the rag at the same time.

The conclusion is, that since we evolved sleeping under moon for hundreds of millions of years in close quarters with our fellow female primates, SOMETHING, whether it is gravity, light, or the elusive ion, affects our bodies in such a way that it can enhance or limit our fertility.

Clearly, the gravity of the moon does affect the oceans, so the idea that the moon may have some sort of similar affect on the fluids of the human body makes sense on a gut level. However, the moon's gravitation is not the same around the world (there are no tides at the equator and that's probably where most of our evolutionary past was spent) and high tides occur BOTH when the moon is full and when the moon is new. This is because the highest tides occur when the moon and sun are in alignment and have nothing actually to do with the phases of the moon...when we see a crescent moon for example, the rest of the moon is STILL THERE, we just can't see it. (for a good explanation, see The Moon And Tides) So whatever force may underlie lunaception, gravity has nothing to do with it.

Much more likely is that light emanating from the moon somehow affects our body chemistry in such a way as to enhance fertility. Solid science exists to show that day length and artificial light can affect health and fertility. The pineal gland, a little part of the brain referred to as "the third eye", produces melatonin and seems to be affected by light. Interestingly, the ovaries of rats who had their pineal glands removed, grew larger in size, and the ovaries of rats raised in constant bright light were unusually small. Children who have tumors of the pineal gland go into puberty very early. The pineal gland and light apparently DO affect fertility. Why might such a thing have evolved? I don't know what the "official" explanation might be, but to me it seems like ovulating in the full moon makes a heck of a lot of sense, if only so you could see what you're doing!

And what about the idea that this is some leftover instinct caused by menstrual synchrony? Well, it turns out that menstrual synchrony may not even be real. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...y-really-exist Now, I worked in a dog kennel for 2 years and I did notice that female dogs (yes I know that's not the right terminology but this is a family website LOL) kept in the same pen did seem to cycle together, but it was very far from 100% of the time. So I have to put this into the plausible category as well, but not proven.

So then, there may be something to it. How do you use Lunaception for boosting fertility, regulating cycles, and swaying?

One of the most intriguing things I have noticed about gender swaying is, anything that seems to boost fertility, seems to sway blue, and anything that seems to reduce fertility seems to sway pink. (Even Clomid - although it does trigger ovulation it reduces fertility in other ways by creating hostile cervical mucus and a less inviting uterine lining.)

According to the book Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Chistiane Northrop MD, studies have shown that peak levels of conception (and concurrently, ovulation since ya can't exactly conceive without it) take place at the full moon. During the new moon, conception/ovulation rates are lowest, and more women begin their menstrual bleeding during the new moon. This is borne out 9 months later when more women go into labor during a full moon - of course conventional wisdom chalks it up to "full moon lunacy" but it may actually be because those pregnant women conceived during the full moon and are simply due to deliver their babies then! And many women seem to notice that their menstrual bleeding starts between 4-6 am, month after month, no earlier, no later. The trigger of darkness may have something to do with this.

We may be able to harness the power of light to help us regulate our cycles. One study involving over 2,000 women with irregular cycles found that just by keeping the light on while they sleep during the three days of ovulation (regardless of when those were) over half of the women were able to achieve regular 28/29 day cycles with 14 day LP. If you want to regulate your cycle or if you are having issues with short LP (less than 12-14 days), try keeping the light on for three days at ovulation and see if it helps you. Can't hurt, may help, and it doesn't cost a thing!

To boost fertility and/or sway blue, you will want to do one of two things. You can simply sleep with the light on when you ovulate and in total darkness the rest of the time. This will help your body believe that the moon is full and it will start churning out extra EWCM to make you more fertile.

Or, if you are a believer in ions, you will want to attempt to reset your ovulation to when the moon is full. According to the ion theory, positive ions sway blue and are somehow generated by the full moon, so it isn't enough just to rely on light to boost your fertility. You want light AND ions so you will want to ovulate with the full moon. In order to reset your ovulation, start sleeping with the light on during the three days you WANT to ovulate and sleep in total darkness the rest of the time. Then when your ovulation coincides with the full moon, ALSO sleep with the light on. You'll be getting both the potential benefits of light and ions.

If you're wanting to sway pink, there are actually three possibilities. You could sleep in the dark constantly and never turn the light on at all and just rely on the darkness to reduce your fertility at ovulation. OR for believers in ions, you'll first want to reset your ovulation to coincide with the new moon, when girl-producing negative ions are supposedly highest, by turning on the light during the new moon and tricking your body into thinking the moon is full. Then you can decide whether or not to keep the light on during the months you actually attempt. If you turn the light on when the moon is new, you're relying an awful lot upon the existence and swaying ability of ions and discounting the fertility boost that the light might bring, but it probably will help you get pregnant faster. If you turn the light out when the moon is new and you're ovulating, you will get the benefits of the darkness at ovulation and the potential benefits of the negative ions.

One other possibility that occurs to me for pink swayers is the notion of keeping the light on ALL THE TIME. Artificial light has been proven to wreak havoc with the body http://www.conceiveonline.com/fertil...ge-1/?Itemid=0 , lowers melatonin (melatonin may improve fertility and therefore sway blue Melatonin May Help IVF Success and Egg Quality - Infertility), so if you're trying for pink it may be that sleeping with a light on or tv going could help.

AFTER CONCEPTION FOR EITHER GENDER - It may help to prevent miscarriage by sleeping in a darkened room. This isn't proven but it certainly doesn't hurt to try it!!

FOR MORE INFO ABOUT MOON SIGNS AND SWAYING - http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...es-for-swaying

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/scie...by-gender.html

You "can't" carry a baby of that gender!!!

you "can't" carry a baby of that gender!

How many times have we heard THAT one?

For those of us with a lot of one gender and none of the other, well-meaning friends and relatives may chime in with that helpful tidbit, implying that for some medical reason, it's actually IMPOSSIBLE for us to conceive or carry to term a child of our desired gender. But how true is it?

Like many old wives' tales, this actually does have a basis in fact. Some women carry certain genetic diseases, like hemophilia or Duchenne muscular dystrophy, on one of their X chromosomes. Everyone has one X chromosome, but women have two. Because of this, if a woman has one bad X and one good X, the genetic data in the good X allows her to develop normally. However, she'll always carry the bad genetic information on her other X chromosome.

Until she has children, she may never even know she carries a defective X chromosome. And if she had all daughters, she still probably would never know, because females get one X from their mother, and one X from their father, so the odds are good that one or the other of these X's will be normal. Some of her daughters will carry the bad X chromosome and some won't, but none of them will develop the disease because they all got at least one good X.

If she has sons, however, then the situation becomes more complicated. Depending on which of their mother's X chromosomes they receive, sons of a woman who carries an X-linked disease can either be perfectly fine (they received a good X from their mom and then their dad's Y chromosome) or they will have the bad X and suffer from the disease. Because they only HAVE one X, they have nothing to fall back on, and they will get sick. If a woman carries one of these diseases, all her daughters will be perfectly healthy (half will be carriers) and half her sons will be healthy, statistically speaking. It's really the luck of the draw which X your children will receive.

Technically, girls CAN get these genetic diseases. But in order to do so, they have to have both parents who carry the disease on their X chromosome, and since the disease will manifest itself in their father, if your husband doesn't have any X-linked disease, the odds are pretty much 100% that his X chromosome is sound and even if you are a carrier of one of these diseases, your daughters would never develop them. If he does have an X-linked disease, it's a very mild one. Otherwise he would be visibly sick or dead.

While Y-linked genetic defects do exist, they are very mild. Colorblindness and an excessive amount of hair on the ears are a couple of examples. If Y-linked disorders caused serious disability, men who carried them would be incapable of fathering children and the mutation would not survive to be handed down from generation to generation. The reason why X-linked diseases exist despite being severe is because females are unaffected carriers, so the genetic mutation survives from one generation to the next. Only males who inherit their mother's one bad X chromosome will ever develop the disease.

Some X-linked diseases are chronic conditions like hemophilia, where a boy can manage the disease their entire life and still have a pretty normal existence. But others cause fetal death in utero or very early on in childhood. If you have a large number of healthy daughters, and have miscarried repeatedly (even if you don't know the gender of the child), you may want to consult with a genetic counselor to rule out the possibility that you carry one of these genetic disorders.

If you are a carrier, you may see a trend in your extended family of more daughters than sons being born, or mysterious cases where a baby boy was born, had developmental delays, and died at a young age. It's not always easy to tell, because doctors really didn't always know why people died even as little as 20 or 30 years ago and so may have attributed deaths to incorrect causes.

If you see such a pattern in your family (it will be on your mother's side), even if you have only one or two daughters or all sons and have never miscarried, you also may want to consult with a geneticist. Remember that it's sheer luck which of your X chromosomes your children receive, so even if you have 5 sons and they are all healthy, if you carry an X-linked disorder, you could still pass down that gene to your next son.

Most of these diseases are extremely, extremely rare. It is very unlikely that you are a carrier, even if you have 10 daughters and no sons. And it is impossible if you have 10 sons and no daughters, because it's NEVER impossible to carry daughters, due to girls having two X chromosomes. So when your neighbor peeks over the garden gate and tells you that you "just can't carry" girls or boys, just ignore him or her. The facts tell a different story.

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ypothesis.html
Understanding the Trivers Willard Hypothesis

Sometimes we get so caught up in the hows of swaying that we forget to think about the whys. But a deeper understanding of WHY swaying happens is of vital importance to the success of everyone’s sway. This understanding can help you formulate a plan so you can work with your body and with Mother Nature, rather than against them. Plus, it can help you understand why atomic sagebrush advises the things that she does rather than sticking to traditional sway tactics that other people swear have worked for them and may even have some pseudo-science-y gibberish behind them, and make it easier for you to let go of things that simply don’t work in favor of concentrating on that which does.

What is the Trivers Willard Hypothesis? Trivers Nutshell version: the Trivers Willard Hypothesis hinges on the idea that animals have a very good reason, evolutionarily speaking, for being able to skew gender ratio in favor of the gender offspring with the best odds of survival to adulthood/competing for mates/successfully reproducing, and that both behavioral and biological mechanisms have evolved (editorial note - or, been designed into us by God) to ensure that this happens. For swaying purposes, we’ll set aside the behavioral aspect of Trivers-Willard and focus on the biological – the stuff that is happening inside our bodies totally out of our control that causes us to conceive more of one gender than another – altho I may mention it along the way.

Trivers-Willard is all about the genes - if a male offspring has a better chance at handing down their ancestors’ genes to the next generation, then a couple should have more boys (and be willing and able to invest in them more heavily after birth), and if a female offspring has a better chance at handing down her ancestors’ genes, then a couple should have more girls (and be willing and able to invest in them more heavily after birth).

What’s the difference between boys and girls? How could the gender of your baby matter to their future survival and their chances of handing down their genes?

Firstly, on average, boys need more calories from the moment of conception, throughout pregnancy, childhood (there ~may~ be a brief period in infancy and toddlerhood where boys do not need more calories) adolescence and into adulthood. Baby boys weigh on average 3.5 oz. more than baby girls do at birth and this difference extends into young adulthood with active older teens and young men requiring in excess of 1000 calories a day more than active females of the same age group. Boys are more demanding even in utero
How Many Calories Do Children Need? | eHow.com

(editorial note – some people like to chalk this up to sexism; as in, boys eat more because parents expect them to be ‘growing boys’ or ‘more active than girls’ or whatever and also claim that moms of boys eat more during pregnancy because they know they’re pregnant with boys. The simple fact is that the average male is larger than the average female and needs more nutrients as a result and research has indicated that male fetuses actually send a signal to their mother’s body that makes them hungrier. So if you see this idea quoted as fact on the Internet, please disregard it because it’s motivated by political correctness and not biological truth.)

Even our breastmilk changes depending on whether or not we’re carrying a boy or a girl. Differences in breastmilk for boys and girls (there’s a link to a study about halfway down this page that explains this in depth.) Beyond that, as many of us have found, when we don’t ingest enough calories while nursing, our milk supply can suffer as a result and so since boys tend to need more calories, any period of time where we are not producing enough milk for our baby can really have an effect, boys more so than girls.

So? some may ask. So I don’t make enough milk for a couple days. What difference does it make really? My baby is not going to DIE because I don’t have quite enough milk for a day or two. Well, keep in mind that the modern world in which we live, with a convenience store full on goodies on every corner, clean water, Nestle Good Start, vaccines, penicillin, and indoor heating, is something that has existed only a very short time in the grand scheme of things. Humans and their genetic ancestors have been around in some form or another for 85 million years, starting off as primates diverging from other mammals, and then becoming more and more human as the years progressed until we gradually became what we are today 50-100,000 years ago.
Most of our existence, the time during which all these funny quirky genes were developing, your baby absolutely could die if you didn’t have enough milk for a day or two. Infant mortality before the 20th century ranged from 30-50%...as many as HALF of all babies born did not survive the first year of life (and it may have been higher still in the environment where our primate ancestors dwelled.)

Aside from dehydration (still the number one killer of babies in the developing world, capable of killing within hours) and chronic starvation, even a temporary lack of food can depress the immune system and make a child less likely to withstand a virus or bacterial infection that would otherwise be harmless. As an example, rotavirus is a disease that is generally harmless to healthy children in the US, Europe, and Australia where babies have access to ample breastmilk or clean formula, but kills 450,000 children a year in the developing world Rotavirus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Beyond sheer survival, a lack of nutrition in infancy can set a child up for a lifetime’s disadvantage. If one doen’t have enough food/nutrients even temporarily in childhood, there can be health effects that last a lifetime. (there are gobs of studies about this that anyone can Google so I won’t share links) Physical development and mental development can be stunted or delayed, the immune system is less able to fight off disease/parasites and so a child is chronically unhealthy. Human development is such a delicate thing, that a major nutritional deficit or life-threatening illness, when a child is 4 days old, 4 months old, or 4 years old can have repercussions that last a lifetime. Developmental delays don’t just go away with a couple of days of good eats. The brain and body can be forever altered by nutritional deficits or serious illness in infancy.

For males, this disadvantage grows huge as maturity approaches. In nature, primates tend to live in harems where one large, strong male is protector and several females live under his protection. Males compete physically for leadership of these harems and a weak male has very little chance of ever becoming the leader of a harem – strong young males band together and bide their time, either by taking the harem over or sneaking opportunities at willing females (sadly, sometimes unwilling females), but a weak male will never get that chance and is usually driven off by the others. If he is even able to survive (single males oftentimes don’t live very long), he’ll never get a chance to mate.

Females, on the other hand, are in high demand as mates. Even smaller, weaker, or more sickly females can typically find someone to mate with them – they don’t have to fight for the right to party (reproductively speaking LOL) Thus, if a mama doesn’t have enough resources to guarantee a big strong son, she’s much better off having a daughter instead because a daughter has much higher chances of surviving to adulthood and successfully reproducing than a son does in that circumstance.

But atomic, humans aren’t deer, cows, or monkeys. Can this really even APPLY to us? We’ve been living in civilization for thousands of years, surely these factors no longer affect us.
Actually, there are some pretty compelling reasons to believe that humans may be the MOST susceptible to the effects of the Trivers Willard Hypothesis. (some are a bit obscure, so PLEASE let me know if this is in any way unclear.)

First of all, animals that have a lot of babies all at once, be it in the millions or even just 5-10 at a time (sponges, sea slugs, most amphibians/most fish/some reptiles, insects, and mammals and birds that have litters or clutches) have a lot less reason to alter the gender ratio. They can take a chance on sending out some boys and some girls and just take the gamble. Odds are that someone will survive to reproduce even in less than ideal circumstances. Humans and most of our closest genetic ancestors, have babies one or two at a time, Octomom notwithstanding, and so it is in our genes’ self-interest to stack the deck as much as possible in favor of our baby’s survival to adulthood/reproduction.

Secondly, most animals are able to raise a baby in a year’s time or even less. Some animals like rabbits, breed, well, like rabbits, and can have 2-3 litters in a year. If you can have 30 kids in a year, if some are boys and some are girls and some live and some don’t, the odds are still with you that someone will manage to make it to the next generation. Whereas humans take a very long time and a huge investment in resources, to raise ONE fragile little offspring to adulthood, so we have to make sure that one offspring has the best chance we can possibly provide, up to and including skewing the gender ratio to conceive the child with the best odds.

Thirdly, birth is an extremely dangerous proposition for humans. A combination of walking upright on two legs and the increase in head size that enabled us to become rapidly more intelligent than all other animals, has created a situation where human birth is more dangerous for mother and child than it is for all other mammals because a baby human’s large head full of clever brains, may not fit easily through the human pelvis, altered to enable us to walk on two legs. Here’s a thorough explanation. Neandertals Babies Didn't Do the Twist - ScienceNOW

As a result, in order for us to be able give birth at all, our offspring have to come out weak, small, and helpless and require years of constant parental care before becoming independent. This severely limits the amount of offspring we can even have, esp. in the case of women. If you have to expend a good 5-8 years raising a child after birth to the point at which leaving them alone for a heartbeat does not lead invariably to their demise, again, you have a lot of motivation to ensure that your effort does not go to waste on anything less than a child with the best chances of survival/reproduction.

Fourthly, humans have a funny quirk called hidden ovulation. We’re the only creatures on the face of the planet who can come into “season” every month and conceive at any point and don’t KNOW we’re capable of conceiving (only very recently have we been able to tell this and even now it’s kinda dicey.) It’s very possible that we might get pregnant at times of year and circumstances that are not ideal, and in less than ideal circumstances, and so it is highly likely that maternal condition is MUCH more important to humans than it is to other animals.
It’s fine for cows to give birth in March, they’ll have spring and summer and fall for their babies to get big and strong.

For humans, thanks to hidden ovulation, our bodies don’t know when we’re going to get pregnant; we can’t necessarily rely on coming into season at a favorable time of year. Our bodies have nothing to go on but our condition (and possibly a few environmental cues such as day length and ambient temperature) so it’s very likely that our condition matters quite a lot in terms of fertility and also our offspring’s gender because that’s all our body has to go off of when judging odds of survival.

Finally, pair bonding. Unlike most other animals, humans tend to live in monogamous relationships that stay mated for some time and childrearing is done together, with both male and female being involved. Behaviorally, we are more similar to many birds than we are to some of our fellow mammals, even primates, and birds with similar behavior patterns to humans have been proven beyond a doubt to alter gender ratio quite significantly. The human male may bring more to the table (both literally and figuratively) than the average mammal/primate male who hangs around more to scare off aggressors and enjoy the favors of his harem, if he hangs around at all, than a human dad who provides a home, food, and care for his offspring. Women who are in committed monogamous relationships, esp. in families headed by a male that is high in the social hierarchy, have more sons than is statistically expected. We don’t know why this is exactly or how it could work, but for a thorough discussion of the possibilities, please read http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...pink-blue.html

atomic, this may be all well and good, maybe it even makes some sense, but doesn’t PROVE that swaying works before conception. Couldn’t people just conceive a gender from luck and then be more likely to miscarry a baby boy? Couldn’t variations in gender ratio boil down to post-conception losses and all this before we conceive is nothing but nonsense?

First of all, the fact is that swaying happens without our doing a single thing. 140-160 boys are conceived for every 100 girls and then so many more boys are lost along the way that the gender ratio falls to 102-106/100 by birth. Even that gender ratio is seriously skewed. Men make 50-50 X and Y sperm and that the gender ratio is any different than that, proves that something is swaying gender blue prior to conception anyway. GUESS WHAT??? MEN MAKE 50-50 X AND Y SPERM!!! AND In defense of swaying Part 1 - Is swaying real??

Beyond statistics alone, eggs are considered “biologically expensive” to produce. Eggs are scarce and precious and every day that passes, we have fewer of them. Compared to sperm, which men are making constantly in huge numbers and can keep on making into their senescence, we are born with all the eggs we’ll ever have at birth and our eggs actually start dying off in droves before we’re ever even born. Each day that goes by, we have less and less eggs. Additionally, during every month of our fertile window, from puberty through menopause, an average of 15-20 eggs in each ovary start to develop and only the best one or two manage to complete the process and are ovulated. So every month, our limited-and-shrinking-by-the-day egg reserve drops by an additional 30-40 eggs. We only have (assuming puberty at 12 and perimenopause at 45) 396 months in which to even conceive, best case scenario, and of course we lose months and years due to pregnancy, breastfeeding, miscarriage, etc. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a lot of time.

Due to our narrow fertile window, it would be ludicrous for our bodies to waste time conceiving babies with anything less than optimal odds of survival. A woman whose genes allowed her to repeatedly conceive babies with lower odds of survival only to miscarry, would be needlessly squandering precious eggs and precious months of her limited fertility. Logic dictates that something is most likely swaying before conception simply because the human body doesn’t like waste and is excellent at conservation.

Additionally, miscarriage itself (let alone losses later in pregnancy) can be a risky business and a woman could end up risking her life for a baby with less than ideal chances of survival – genes just don’t favor that kind of scenario. Not only would you risk your own life and that of your unborn child, but you’re your already living children – kids without moms don’t always survive very long, even in early human societies.

Your genes WANT to survive and the genes we have, have been the ones that were the level-best at being handed down by our primate ancestors and early humans for nearly 100 million years. It is extremely likely that some mechanism(s) have evolved (or been designed into us by God) to make sure that when we get pg, if one gender vs. another has better odds of survival, we’re going to be at least somewhat more likely to conceive that gender – otherwise our bodies wouldn’t take the chance. It’s not a perfect system and it may very well be that some boys are lost after conception from lack of nutrients, but overall, I believe the data supports the idea that swaying prior to conception is a biological fact even tho we do not yet know how it all works.

Ok, then, please explain why, if this Trivers-Willard thingamagigger exists, why don’t poor countries have way more girls and rich countries have way more boys?

This is a complicated and intriguing question that I’ve spent countless hours thinking about. I don’t claim to have all the answers on every aspect of swaying but I have come up with some explanations that make sense to me and seem to fit the facts.

First of all, many countries in Africa DO have more daughters born than is statistically expected, consistently, year in and year out. In fact, most equatorial countries do (with a few exceptions, they tend to be poorer than temperate climates). Also, many countries particularly in Asia and the Middle East, sadly practice female infanticide that skews the gender ratio towards males so much that we really have no way of knowing what the true birth rate is in these countries. (Aside – some of the statistical “data” used to support the French Gender Diet comes from these countries and should be viewed with a skeptical eye. The FGD book quotes very extreme gender ratios from some Asian countries and explains it as due to a high sodium, low calcium diet, but modern research has revealed that the skewed gender ratio in Asian countries is almost certainly because of female infanticide and gender-based abortion.)

Secondly, even in poorer countries and times of famine, there are vast differences in the amount of food resources different individuals have access to. Some people ALWAYS have plenty, some people NEVER have enough, regardless of the overall prosperity of the nation in which they live. Aside from financial resources, some people just don’t eat as much as others, or eat much more, due to personal preference, cultural reasons, health or psychological issues. We’ve all heard the expression, “You can never be too rich or too thin” and many times, obesity and overeating is actually affiliated with poverty, not wealth. Over the course of a country’s entire population, it becomes far too complex to tease out these factors. There is no way to really generalize to the individual level, on the basis of the overall GNP of the country in which a person lives.

Third, it may very well be the case that in times of true famine, some women who were in declining condition and might have been more "set" for girls to begin with, decline further and stop conceiving all together (or choose not to conceive due to lack of resources). Women who might have been neutral with equal odds at a boy or a girl, may decline and have more girls. Women who were in great physical condition, may simply not decline in condition enough to have girls and may continue to have sons even if times are hard for them. (One study in Africa found that women who conceived boys during time of famine, had greater muscle mass than those who conceived girls.)

Or, it may be that due to their individual wealth/health, anyone who is able to conceive (or who is WILLING to, because even poor countries and historically, they had/have their ways of preventing pregnancy) may very well be richer and/or in better health than others and may be preselected towards boys to begin with. The couples who might otherwise have conceived girls, may either be unable or unwilling to conceive, skewing the ratio towards the families who were well off enough to remain fertile in the face of famine, and were willing to continue having children even in less than ideal circumstances.

Basically, all this amounts to the levels of boys and girls staying pretty consistent in times of famine – less babies may be born overall because some people who might otherwise have had babies choose not to or cannot have them due to lack of food; despite this, the gender ratio itself would remain somewhere in the ballpark of 50-50.

Fourth, improving/declining maternal condition may be more effective a sway tactic than nutrient deprivation is. (of course, nutrient deprivation is really just one way of causing declining maternal condition, but there are of course other ways to do the same thing.) Declining condition does not always mean less access to food and more food does not necessarily equal improving condition. People who don't eat much but eat the right foods, can be in great physical condition while another person can be overly nourished and be in poor condition. The reason why we lose weight to sway pink, is because it's unreliable and terrible for health to try and gain weight for swaying. Tons of things outside of food resources have been proven to sway - exposure to chemicals, certain diseases, stress, smoking, increasing parental age; all sway by meeting the prerequisite of declining maternal condition, even in someone who eats 3000 cals a day.

Fifth, humanity has evolved for its entire existence eating very few calories - we can adjust and stay fertile even in a lower calorie environment. The whole idea that women need 2000+ cals a day to survive on, and foods from all four food groups, is new to the human experience. Most of our existence was spent subsisting on a few bites of half-eaten antelope carcass scavenged from some hyenas, a rotten banana, and some termites. We are GOOD at staying fertile and having babies of both genders on not a lot of calories, otherwise there would not be 7 billion of us. Most women around the world eat a lot less than that and always have, and both boys and girls keep right on being conceived. In fact, it may even be that too much food is causing us to decline in condition so for some of us in wealthier countries, we actually have too much of a good thing going on and gender ratio may be skewed more pink than it would be otherwise, as a result. Please read the following essay for a more thorough explanation. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...irls-boys.html

Finally, gender swaying can never be 100% or even close, because if it were, the human race would have died out a long time ago. Nor can it be easy to figure out - it MUST be multifactorial or those clever old wives would have figured it out long, long ago. It’s very likely that there are dozens, if not hundreds of factors that are swaying, some of which may be utterly out of our control. Food resources are just one of many cues from the environment that our bodies interpret and use to "decide" which gender has the best shot of survival to reproduce. Luck has to play a part as well – obviously my belief is that you can up your odds with swaying (maybe even quite a lot) but Mother Nature/God has a vested interest in ensuring that there are always both boys and girls being born!!

In defense of swaying Part 1 - Is swaying real??
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/scie...ying-real.html
For all those out there whose husbands, doctors, college professors, parents, and obnoxious strangers swear that swaying can't possibly be true because everyone "knows" that gender is 50-50, the man is the only party that matters, and it is luck alone that determines gender.

Ignaz Semmelweis was a doctor in the 19th century, who worked in a hospital with two maternity clinics. He noticed a startling difference in the number of deaths in one of the maternity clinics - on average, 10% of all women who delivered in that clinic (the First Clinic, where medical doctors trained) died of childbed fever (a disease that used to kill many women after giving birth) while less than 5% died in the other clinic (the Second Clinic, where midwives trained). To his chagrin, he realized that even fewer women who delivered at home, aided by friends and family, developed childbed fever...less than 1%. Something had to be causing the different rates of death, but what???

He got his answer when tragically, his good friend was accidentally stabbed by a scalpel while performing an autopsy and died a short time later, of what seemed to be childbed fever!!! Semmelweis realized that the doctors-in-training at the First Clinic were coming directly from performing autopsies to deliver babies, without washing their hands first, and this contamination was what was causing childbed fever. The midwives in the Second Clinic did not perform autopsies and were thus less likely to spread this contagion to patients. Semmelweis began to urge doctors to wash their hands with a bleach solution before delivering babies, and wherever the practice was adopted, deaths from childbed fever plummeted.

Dr. Semmelweis is today hailed as "the Savior of Women" but during his day, his theory was looked upon very skeptically by many. Germs had not been discovered yet and disease was "KNOWN" by every educated person to be caused by "bad air/miasma" or an imbalance in the "Four Humours". Some doctors took offense at the suggestion that they were unclean or could possibly be spreading disease. He was ridiculed constantly and forced to mount defenses against false accusations. The constant persecution eventually took its toll on Dr. Semmelweis and he was committed to an institution against his will, where he died, ironically of septicemia, the very thing he had fought so hard against.

Ah, those old-timey people. Thank goodness we have modern medicine to keep us from making decisions based on superstition rather than facts. Right???

Fast forward to the 20th century. Germs had been discovered and modern medicine seemed capable of performing miracles. Doctors "KNEW" for many decades, what triggered the formation of ulcers. Stress and eating spicy foods caused ulcers and consequently, patients were told to relax and eat bland foods to cure them. However, in the late 70's and early 80's, pathologist Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshall had a different theory - they believed a bacterium that they had observed was actually the cause of ulcers. (some previous research dating back as far as the 1800's also seemed to support this idea, but most ignored it).

Warren and Marshall were also held up for ridicule by the medical establishment. Everyone "KNEW" that ulcers were caused by spicy foods and stress, and everyone "KNEW" that bacteria couldn't possibly live inside the human stomach. In 1984, Marshall decided to put his money where his mouth was (literally) and drank a beaker of H. Pylori, the bacterium he believed to be responsible for causing ulcers. Only 5 days later he developed a raging stomach infection. Eventually, Marshall and Warren collected enough evidence to prove their theory correct and now people with ulcers are given antibiotics rather than vague instructions for relaxation and drinking milk.

Scientific progress often takes the form of the discoveries of Semmelweis and Marshall/Warren. Someone observes an occurance that does not make sense given the evidence, and comes up with an alternative explanation. At times, like Semmelweis, the person who notices the anomaly may not understand or have enough data to explain why things are the way they are, but that doesn't negate their observations. We still do not know what causes gravity, but that does not mean that gravity doesn't exist...Newton observed gravity, he described gravity, and we don't go flying off the planet for SOME reason!!

The scientific writer and historian Thomas Kuhn referred to the set of scientific beliefs that define a certain era as a paradigm. When new discoveries challenge these beliefs, the paradigm shifts and a new paradigm is formed. Regardless of what a person learned as fact in high school biology or even in medical school, and no matter how many fancy letters follow their name or diplomas hang upon their walls, the truth is, swaying is 100% supported by both logic and evidence. We need a new paradigm, because "gender is a coin flip" paradigm is not supported by the facts. People, even highly knowledgeable experts, "KNOW" a lot of things but the fact is, they only know them until new information comes along. And at times, it's the most knowledgeable and informed amongst us who are the most resistant to changing their opinions, because they are so steeped in the paradigm that they are accustomed to.

What do we really know about gender ratio???

We KNOW that animals like birds, amphibians, and reptiles can and do alter gender ratio. No one disputes this and a variety of mechanisms have already been proved to sway gender in these animals, such as temperature and minerals in the environment.

We KNOW that experts on evolutionary biology, even very famous and world-renowned scientists like Richard Dawkins, EO Wilson, Robert Trivers, and Satoshi Kanazawa, believe that some similar mechanism(s) has surely evolved amongst mammals to alter the gender ratio to maximize a child's survival. According to the book "Darwin's Ghost" by Steve Jones, even Charles Darwin himself suspected that animals, including mammals, could vary gender ratio of their offspring. Even though they don't know the mechanism itself, just like Newton's apple falling to earth for some reason that we still don't comprehend, they believe such a mechanism(s) exists.

We KNOW that under certain circumstances, mammals in the lab or observed in the wild, have had different gender ratios than what is statistically expected, at times quite dramatically. So aside from theory, mammals evidently CAN alter their gender ratio much like birds and reptiles can. Dietary factors, hormonal changes, and social dominance have all been linked to changes in the expected sex ratio. http://www.reproduction-online.org/c...17/2/403.short Birth sex ratio and social rank: consistency and variability within and between primate groups
Maternal Diet and Other Factors Affecting Offspring Sex Ratio: A Review
http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/zoostaff/la...s/kruuk99b.pdf
(there are literally hundreds of studies like this, this is just the first few I came across on my desk.)

We KNOW that human men make 50-50 X and Y sperm. They HAVE to. It is biologically impossible for them to make anything BUT 50-50 X and Y sperm. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...-X-AND-Y-SPERM

We KNOW that the gender ratio of boys born to girls born amongst humans is NOT 50-50. Worldwide, gender ratio varies from 103-100 to 108-100. Sperm that are 50% X and 50% Y mean that some other mechanism MUST be in play to produce gender ratios like that.

We KNOW that the gender ratio of boys conceived to girls conceived is even greater...approximately 140-160 boys are conceived to every 100 girls. Source - Essentials of Genetics, 4th edition, William S. Klug and Michael R. Cummings, published in 2006. Again, sperm that are 50-50 and rates of conception that different, mean that some mechanism is at play BEFORE (or during) conception, rather than an increased rate of miscarrying girls altering the gender ratio. Actually more boys are miscarried, by a significant amount. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...60315/abstract

We KNOW that families with several boys are statistically more likely to conceive boys that should be "expected" and families with several girls are also statistically more likely to conceive boys than should be "expected." Also, mixed gender families are less likely than is "expected". http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...!-anybody-know Research has also indicated that some families have more of a particular gender than is "expected." (this is the same link as above - both topics are discussed in this essay.) http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...-X-AND-Y-SPERM Amongst twin conceptions, girls are more common than they "should" be and twin boys are less common that statistics predict. Ergo, gender cannot be the simple flip of the coin it is made out to be.

We KNOW that women in certain careers tend to have altered sex ratios in their offspring. http://www.danechristensen.net/stuff/Job-Child.pdf If gender ratio was entirely determined by the male and the luck of the draw, how could this be the case?

We KNOW that maternal diet seems to alter the gender ratio in humans. Maternal Eating Disorders Influence Sex Ratio at Birth BBC News | HEALTH | 'More girl babies' for vegetarians http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.o.../1661.abstract

We KNOW that it's not just the ladies who affect gender ratio...males in certain careers such as chemistry, deep sea diving, fighter pilots, professional cyclists, pesticide applicators, and anesthetists have more daughters than is statistically expected, despite the fact that they STILL make 50-50 X and Y sperm and both X and Y sperm have been proved to be equally hardy and long-lived. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...rm-and-Y-sperm

To sum up, regardless of what the conventional wisdom claims, what "experts" say or even what your family doctor believes, the evidence demonstrates that gender swaying is possible, and sex ratio of offspring is neither simple luck or entirely determined by the male. We may not know why or how it all works just yet, but the evidence is def. on the side of swaying.

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/scie...s-swayers.html
Understanding Scientific Studies for Swayers

There’s little more frustrating to a dedicated swayer, than when you have your sway plan pretty well in hand and then someone posts a link to a study or article that seems to fly in the face of your sway plan. Equally discouraging is when you look for data to back up your sway plan and realize it’s really pretty sparse, or ask a question and all atomic has to say is “We don’t know!”

Let’s take a closer look about where these studies come from and what they mean, and hopefully shed some light on why no one needs to EVER panic or despair over a single study.

1)Why are there so few studies done on gender swaying?

It’s a maddening truth; very few studies are done on gender ratio (and the ones that are out there, are often less awesome than we would like.) Altho I couldn’t find a hard number online, there simply aren’t enough medical researchers to go around. Think of it this way…in order to be a medical researcher, you have to hold a doctorate (requiring a decade or more of study and a huge financial investment in one’s eduation), and medical researchers must study every aspect of medicine out there – cancer, heart disease…gender ratio is really pretty far down the list of priorities for most, not only because gender ratio seems a minor concern to many people and many people find desire for an offspring of a particular gender distasteful, but also because there’s very little money to be made at it (see number 2 below)

Of the studies that are done, many are done by graduate students working towards their doctorate (they’re often the only ones who have the time and inclination to study something that is a bit outside the main******.) Often, their more qualified academic supervisor will tack their name on the front of the study before publication to give the study more credibility. While there’s nothing wrong with this in theory, there have been times I’ve read a study where the data was sound and intriguing, but the conclusion was farfetched or downright misleading. (Example – the study that looked at gender ratio through family trees and hypothesized that there is a gene that makes more X or Y sperm, when other science strongly indicates that isn’t true and could never be true. That was a student’s thesis paper…not that it makes it useless, just that to my way of thinking, it carries less weight than a study done by a fully qualified researcher with a lifetime of experience. Boy Or Girl? It's In The Father's Genes)

So basically, we’re dealing with a very limited pool to begin with (few medical researchers), a large body of data to study (the entire pantheon of medicine/biology), and gender ratio is very far down the list of priorities for most researchers (and can even reflect badly upon them should they pursue it.)

2) Who is funding these studies and why?

Further complicating matters, most scientific studies are funded by pharmaceutical companies that stand to make billions of dollars in profits from drug sales (on average, a single drug company makes profits of $9-13 billion dollars a year) and focus their energies on things that can make them money – the creation of new drugs. While governments and universities do fund studies, the cost of a single, well designed study can be upwards of $12 million dollars and take years to carry out, and are often limited to political hot-potatoes like breast cancer and AIDS that have strong political lobbies backing them up.

Not only does gender swaying lack a political lobby, there are millions of people who believe the very idea to be repellent, harkening back to the age of eugenics. Gender selection is illegal in many countries. Thus, it’s highly unlikely that we can expect any reliable studies from the people who are the best at them – drug companies, government research facilities, and research universities.
We do benefit from the castoffs of the big money fertility business, but their interests lie in getting couples pregnant and that’s where they make their money, not in determining the hows and whys boys and girls are conceived. Fertility clinics in many countries could never use that information anyway because gender selection is illegal and have no interest in pursuing the issue.

The cold, hard truth is that we don’t have enough information and we may NEVER have enough information because there’s no real money to be made here. People may say “If gender swaying were real, someone would have figured it out a long time ago because they’d make a fortune at it” but that really isn’t the case. If diet and lifestyle is the key, no one will ever make $9 billion dollars of profit a year from peddling a diet and exercise book, even if it was a bestseller. And the entire issue is so fraught with political and historical baggage, that many wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. We’re on our own here. So we have to become experts at picking the wheat from the chaff and discerning good studies from bad ones.

3)Why are some studies better than others and how can we tell?

There are a few criteria that help to determine a good study from a bad one.

--It must be done in humans. Yes, we do occasionally have access to intriguing studies done in other animals but at the end of the day, mice, cows, sows, hinds, wild horses, and especially, especially sea sponges, marine worms, etc. are NOT humans and have drastically different dietary needs and even more importantly, drastically different reproductive cycles than any other creature on the face of the globe. Humans are the only animal that is constantly fertile and has “hidden ovulation” (historically speaking, and actually up to a very few years ago) where neither male nor female even KNOWS when she’s coming into heat (ovulating). Even with modern technology it’s difficult to pinpoint O!

Also, humans, by virtue of having fewer offspring over the course of a lifetime than most other animals, actually have the most motivation for being able to alter gender ratio of their offspring in some fashion to increase odds of survival and handing down genes. If you only GET one offspring, it really behooves you to be able to “pick” the gender of offspring with the best odds of survival and reproduction. I strongly suspect that humans may be the most susceptible to swaying for this very reason. If you’re a female dog having a litter of 10 puppies every year, you can afford to play around with having some boys and some girls. If you’re a human being whose entire genetic burden rests on the shoulders of one offspring over the course of a lifetime, you better do whatever it takes to ensure that offspring has the absolute best chance of getting a mate.

Editorial note - It is really quite ludicrous to assume that because you can make marine worms (who have millions of offspring, release millions of eggs and sperm over the course of a lifetime, are able to change their genders depending on external environment, and do not even fertilize eggs in the female’s body) have more boys or girls if you dump some sodium or calcium in their tanks, that this can in any way be extrapolated to mammals, and especially to humans. I BEG you, do not base a sway on any study done in any animal lower on the food chain than mice.

--A study should include as few variables as possible. Example – you can’t study timing by giving people who want girls, Clomid and telling them to DTD 3 days before ovulation, and performing IUI on O day for people who want boys, and then make any claim that timing sways at all. You cannot ADD variables to an experiment, it negates or at least confuses the results.

As complex as gender swaying is, it may be impossible to fully separate cause from effect that way. We’d need to take a thousand genetically identical women who ate identical diets throughout their entire life before switching to a sway diet, and impregnate them all from one batch of sperm (and hope that the guy we got it from, was not predisposed to father more of one gender than another.) We may NEVER be able to fully know every aspect of gender ratio and that means that eliminating conflicting variables in studies is even MORE important because there are already so many variables that are utterly beyond our control.

--Everyone taking part in a trial has to be informed about it and consent. This is a rule designed to prevent abuse on the part of the researcher, which sadly happened quite a bit during the 20th century even up to the 1960’s (Google “Tuskeegee Experiment”). The downside of this very valuable and important rule is, when people know what the outcome of a study is “supposed” to be, they may alter their behavior, may remember things inaccurately, and may even fudge data to prevent the researchers from getting mad at them if they didn’t follow the rules of the study. Also, the people who are willing to participate in said study may be self-selected in some way that might alter the results…example, the Dutch study. It’s not the best science to take a group of people who are highly motivated to have a child of a particular gender and tell them to eat certain foods and just TRUST that they aren’t going to do other gender swaying methods at the same time. They’re so highly motivated to have a baby of their DG that they might do anything, even break the rules of the study itself to get that baby.

Plus, never underestimate the power of the human mind and the placebo effect. It’s been proven that if a person believes strongly enough that a drug will work for them, they may feel better after taking it even if the pill is nothing other than sugar. Gender swaying may even have a sort of a reverse placebo due to the idea of swaycession raising testosterone levels - some people who might have gotten pink, may end up getting blue due to their T levels skyrocketing as they launch .

As a result of all these factors, we actually may find that we get better data from studies that were not even DONE on gender ratio, but instead were studying a different topic entirely and were done in the population as a whole, not a tiny subset of people who are suffering from strong gender desire. (luckily, we do have some studies like that.)

--It needs to be well-powered (i.e. include many people, and the more people, the more reliable the results) A study done on O+12 that involved 33 people, only 2 of whom even conceived on the day after O (possibly) proves NOTHING.

--It needs to use the most reliable methods and technology. Many studies done prior to the last decade, rely on bad science and outdated technology, such as timing studies where ovulation was never even pinpointed or women were told to simply BD on CD 14, when we know that ovulation can vary dramatically between women and even in the same woman from month to month.
Another example is “quinacrine staining” to tell the difference between X and Y sperm. It doesn’t work, and any study that uses this method, is worthless and should be disregarded.

Also, always keep in mind that the methods of study themselves may affect the outcome…Microsort IS the best method we have of differentiating X and Y sperm, but it may be that the Microsort process affects the sperm in some way that may change their behavior or qualities.

--It has to have an appropriate design (randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded). Patients need to be randomly placed into different treatment groups and neither they nor the medical staff attending them should know whether they are receiving the placebo or the treatment. Let’s emphasize that – NEITHER patient NOR researcher should know if they are receiving placebo or treatment. A study where researchers tell people to eat a certain diet to conceive a baby girl or boy and they BOTH know going in what the desired results are, violates this precept big time, and should be viewed cautiously.

That sounds impossible to get around where swaying is concerned, but I believe the best study on gender ratio and diet that we have so far, was done by Fiona Matthews and her assistants and Oxford. She wasn’t studying gender ratio, she was studying birth defects, and so she and her researchers, and the participants in the study, had no motivation to fudge results consciously or subconsciously. Only after the fact did they notice that women who consumed the most nutrients had the most boys, and those who consumed the least nutrients had the most girls. I think the Oxford study is worth 50 FGD/Dutch studies for this very reason. The Nurses’ Study II is also a good study (done on diet and how it affects fertility), but unfortunately there isn’t any data on gender outcomes that I am aware of.

Randomized means that you have to take people from the population as a whole to ensure that any variables sort of average out over the population. A study done solely on women with PCOS or anorexia, while they may be helpful in many ways, can’t really tell us much about people without PCOS or anorexia, because they probably have different hormonal profiles and may respond to diet in different ways. A study done on infertile couples might yield very different results than one done on fertile couples. A study done on diet in women who’ve already had 2-3-4-5 boys/girls already, is less valuable than a study done on the population at random, because it may be those women are predisposed to conceive a certain gender, or may be statistically “due” to conceive the other.
This is not make or break and in fact studies done on select groups can actually be informative, but we just can’t assume that they will always apply to us personally.

--It should be long enough to supply meaningful conclusions. In an ideal world, we’d take a million couples and monitor their diets and lifestyles over their reproductive lives, but of course this isn’t doable. I WOULD love to see a study done on couples who swayed more than one time, however. Are these results flukes, one time shots, or is there really something consistent going on??

--Studies done by a single researcher or group of researchers who are highly motivated to produce a certain result (William James, Drs. Stolkowski and Papa, the Dutch study people, even Atomic's theories) should always be viewed with some skepticism. The way studies are designed, it is standard practice to avoid mention of any data that conflicts with the hypothesis of the study and only mention studies that support the hypothesis. Scientists know this and take it into account, but for those of us who are not scientists, it can be extremely misleading. It’s also human nature to want to present your case as compellingly as you can.

--The outcome of any study should be able to be repeated by independent researchers. Timing has been utterly debunked because independent researchers could not repeat Dr. Shettles’ results and in fact found the opposite on several occasions, so it’s logical to conclude that timing doesn’t sway at all and Dr. Shettles’ results were either flukes or must be explained in other ways. Similarly, when independent researchers tried to repeat Stolkowski’s results in sows, they couldn’t do it.

Be aware, though, that it’s not unusual to have studies done by different researchers that point in all different directions. Heart disease is studied way, way more than gender ratio, in larger, better designed studies the likes of which we can only dream of, and yet they STILL get all kinds of different results pointing in different ways. Is an extremely low fat vegetarian diet best for heart disease? Mediterranean? Atkins? The data is inconclusive. Just within the last month or two, we’ve had studies that seemed to indicate exercise may actually make heart disease worse for some people, and that the so-called “good” cholesterol may not be good after all. Please don’t despair or give up on swaying because of conflicting results, that’s just par for the course.

4)Given all that, how can we really know anything about gender swaying at all? Are all studies worthless?

NO. There are some tricks we can use to help discern good data from bad data.

--Accidental data. We get some of our best data entirely by accident, from researchers studying entirely different topics. The Oxford Study and the Nurses’ Study II discussed above, are examples of this. Some of our best data is a byproduct of fertility research. It’s not perfect of course, but much of this info is leagues better than the FGD/Dutch studies and the timing stuff, because it comes from large, doubleblind studies (neither researcher or participant was looking for a particular outcome) and therefore is untainted by either intense gender desire on the part of the participants or bias on the part of the researchers.

Also, we can often use bad data to uncover good data. With the timing studies that used Clomid vs. IUI, since timing has been debunked repeatedly, when we remove timing as a possible variable, we’re left with the probability that Clomid sways pink and IUI sways blue.

--Trends from other studies. We can look for similarities between studies and see if there are any trends. Several studies have demonstrated that myriad things that are detrimental to sperm, sway pink. Things as dissimilar as riding a bicycle, jogging, pesticide exposure, exposure to radiation, heavy metals, various chemicals, anesthetics, and smoking, have all been shown to lower sperm count, reduce sperm quality, and lower the gender ratio (more girls conceived.) Consequently, we can feel quite safe in assuming that things that are harmful to sperm while in a man’s body and lower sperm count prior to ejaculation, tend to sway pink.

With a bit less confidence, we can extrapolate that trend further and assume that things that lower sperm count and are detrimental to sperm even after it’s left a man’s body will still sway pink. Can we KNOW this to be true, not with the data we have, but we can still feel pretty good about assuming that it is and emulating those conditions to the best of our ability.

--Cause and effect. Even though we don’t know all the particulars of HOW gender swaying works, we do have a pretty good handle on WHY. Thanks to the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis and the data we have that shows quite clearly that baby boys need more nutrients from the moment of conception, through pregnancy, breastfeeding, and in fact their entire lives, we can operate under the assumption that a lower nutrient maternal diet prior to conception leads to more girls conceived and vice versa. Quite a few studies support this as well in both humans and other mammals. We don’t really need to totally understand the mechanisms at play, (maybe it’s testosterone, maybe it’s blood sugar, maybe declining fertility, maybe it’s something we haven’t even begun to guess at or all these things working in concert.) We just need to emulate the conditions and alter our diets in the direction of less for girls, more for boys. Mother Nature will take care of the rest.

Conversely, timing as a method of gender swaying makes so little sense that it’s highly unlikely to be true. If your body didn’t have enough nutrients to sustain a boy pregnancy on Thursday, then there’s no way you had enough nutrients to sustain him on Saturday. It would be foolish for the human body to conceive a baby of a certain gender (an enterprise which until very recently, killed many women in the process) based on something so arbitrary as the day of the week you had sex on.

--Biological plausibility. When we look at swaying studies, if some aspect of the study does not add up with the fundamental workings of the human body, then the outcome of the study is meaningless and there has to be some other explanation for the results. We know that it’s impossible for cal-mag-sod-pot levels to vary beyond a very narrow range (except in cases of severe illness or malnutrition so severe you would have made yourself ill to the brink of death) and your body has mechanisms that work to keep the electrolytes within that range...if you eat too much calcium, your body excretes it, and if you eat too little, your body robs your bones and teeth to get it. We also know that X and Y sperm do not have different electrical charges and cannot be attracted by “ions” in the cervical mucus. As a result, the French Gender Diet simply cannot be swaying because of the levels of electrolytes in your blood OR because ions in your CM attract X and Y sperm differently, no matter what the FGD book claims. The diet may very well sway but it’s NOT because of the electrolytes.

pH is another example – yes, there are studies that indicate low pH in the vagina may cause more girls to be conceived, but it’s biologically impossible that X sperm “love” low pH and Y sperm “love” high pH. ALL sperm thrive in pH that is in the 7’s, which is why semen pH and CM at ovulation is in that range. The fluids produced uterus, Fallopian tubes, and even the fluid that emerges with the egg at ovulation, all has pH in the 7’s. This pH idea would be extremely easy for fertility doctors to test for and use and the idea has been touted for decades so they've all heard of it. If there was ANYTHING to it, they’d simply put an egg in low pH solution and dump some sperm in for a girl and vice versa and voila, cheap gender determination that would make them a quick fortune. But they don’t. Fertility clinics have to use Microsort or PGD for gender determination because pH does NOT attract X and Y sperm differently. Low pH kills sperm. Very high pH kills sperm. Medium pH is ideal for sperm, both X and Y, and thus biological plausibility dictates that whatever pH does (and it may well sway in vivo conditions), it’s not by attracting one sperm vs. another.

--Real-world observations. While “anecdotal” evidence is often poo-poohed by the scientific establishment, the actual definition of the word “anecdote” is simply, a case study that hasn’t been published yet. We are ALL case studies and our experiences and observations are just as meaningful and valuable as those of any researcher (and perhaps more so because we have not been indoctrinated with the main****** establishment viewpoint.) The data we are amassing on this site is invaluable for the benefit of everyone and I really encourage everyone to chime in and share their sways, what worked for them, what didn’t seem to work, things they’ve randomly noticed, and so on. Don't be shy! Lurkers, you're welcome here and please post!!

We may not always be (or ever be) 100% mright, but if we don’t try, we’ll never even get close. Every major scientific breakthrough originated from someone who randomly noticed a pattern and started to wonder about it. We have hundreds of minds and lifetimes of experience, here working in concert to draw from.

Remember, no one is going to do this for us – there’s not enough money to be made to offset the costs of the studies, and the interest level just isn’t there. It’s up to us to cut through the BS and sift through the garbage looking for the swaying gold!!

http://genderdreaming.com/forum/gend...ys-attack.html

when sways ATTACK!

or, why do people get sway opposites and what can we do about it?

Unfortunately, some sways do go bad and end up bringing us a sway opposite. Swaying does work In defense of swaying Part 1 - Is swaying real?? but not 100% of the time. There are tons of opposites even among the best sways.

If you really truly cannot handle a sway opposite, then you need to investigate high tech or adoption, or postpone TTC until your head and heart are able to handle the possibility.

The least important reason why sways fail, but the first thing most people think of, is lack of compliance. Some people don't want to or can't do all the various sway tactics. And you know what, that's totally, absolutely, 100% ok. You need to put your own personal sanity, well being, family's needs, and your marriage ahead of a sway at all times. After all, we all know tons of people who never do any of this crazy-a$$ stuff and have kids of both genders and there have been opposites with sways that were perfect and in people who swayed for 2 years before getting pg. It may be the only thing you need to do to get your DG is just get pregnant again.

It's YOUR sway and it's up to you to pick and choose from the sway tactics out there. Never feel like your sway will go south if you don't include every OWT or vaguely science-ish tactic ever heard of. Even if you just do one tiny little thing, it's still a sway, it still sways your odds to some extent, even if it's only 1%. Even if you do nothing, you still have a chance at your DG! NO ONE is ever at fault for any sway opposite; if it's anyone's "fault" it's mine and I hope everyone feels free to blame me whenever anything goes wrong - throw darts at a dartboard with my picture on it, stick pins in a tiny atomic sagebrush-shaped voodoo doll, whatever it takes!

That having been said, you have to own your decisions and be able to live with them. If you want to do a relaxed sway, that's great! If you need to get pregnant quickly and have to drop sway tactics, no worries. If you've had enough already and just want to have a baby in your arms, we've all been there. But if you cheat all the time on diet, you have to be honest with yourself, it's not going to be as effective for you as it would be if you were stricter. If all you choose to include in your sway is a wooden spoon under the bed and tighty whiteys, don't kid yourself that your sway is in any way a sure thing - NO sway is ever a sure thing, even the best of them.

Whatever you include in a sway or drop, keep in mind that you're going to have to live with it - will you wake up for the rest of your life in a cold sweat at 3am wishing you had used Acijel?

Some sways may fail is because of what DH brings to the table. If your husband won't or can't sway, there's not a lot you can do about it. Or SHOULD. One of my cardinal rules of swaying is, "If Daddy ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Pressuring or bullying your hubby into swaying if he isn't interested, is a recipe for marital disharmony. There have been husbands that have gotten so annoyed with the entire show that not only do they refuse to sway, they pull the plug on the whole baby-making adventure and if you can't get pg, you have NO chance at your DG. Others may pretend to go along with it and then once out of eyesight, simply eat what they want, smoke what they want, and release when they want, which is almost worse than if they just refused to go along with it because at least then, you can have a stricter sway in other ways knowing that DH is not helping.

It's very likely that DH is less important than what you yourself can accomplish alone, and many of us have had successful sways with DH that wouldn't do a thing to assist.

Some sways may fail because of things that simply cannot be changed. It may very well be that some of us are just more "set" to produce more of one gender than another. We can change some things, but at the end of the day we've had a lifetime of eating certain foods, doing certain things in our lives, and even our DNA may be working against us to some extent. For a more thorough explanation of this principle, please read this: another way to look at the swaying odds

Some sways may fail because of the effect of swaying on our testosterone levels. Pink swayers, you want lower T levels and by launching into new and exciting projects that are challenging to you, can increase T levels. Blue swayers, feeling overwhelmed, overstressed, and fearing failure can lower T levels. Please read this essay for more detail: Understanding the "Law" of Testosterone Supply and Demand

Another reason why sways fail is BAD INFORMATION. Or NO information. We just don't have enough data at this point to really know or understand how swaying works. We are giving our best guess but we just don't have enough info to go on. Some things seem contradictory and other things we don't have explanations for. Things like blood sugar and hormone levels, not even the smartest researchers on the planet understand how those things even work, let alone interact with the gender ratio. Most of the "data" out there comes from people who have a vested financial interest in presenting a certain explanation of swaying - those who are selling a diet or sway program - and so their studies are pretty suspect to begin with.

And it's probably pretty likely that this state of affairs will continue into the near future anyway - there is very little interest in gender swaying and gender ratio, at least in humans, and you can read more about why that is, here: Understanding Scientific Studies for Swayers

THE MAIN REASON WHY SWAYS FAIL...drum roll please...

....bad luck.

Sorry, I wish it was something more exciting like solar flares or pixie dust, terrorism or alien invasion; alas, no.

Nothing that happens in the human body is ever effective 100% of the time. People smoke their whole lives and never get lung cancer, people eat eggs and bacon every day and live to be 99...yet no one would deny that smoking causes cancer. Even though it doesn't happen every time, overall, if you smoke, you're way more likely to get it than the average person is.

In the case of gender ratio, Mother Nature has a vested interest in making sure that both boys and girls are always being born in some proportion. A species that started having all of one gender just because they ate some salt would have died out a long time ago. The myth of the magic foods

So IF, (and that's a BIG IF) swaying could ever get us to 80%/20% (which is what some of the info on diet seems to indicate) there would still be people having opposites 20% of the time. That's a LOT of opposites. And for those of us with 3,4,5 of the same gender already, if you only swayed on your last child, it doesn't mean swaying doesn't work for you or can't work, it just means that this ONE time, the odds didn't come up your way. You may have done a great sway. You may have gone from 20-80 where you conceived your other kiddos, to 80-20, and then just got unlucky that one time.

Umm, well, then what's the point of even swaying anyway, if it just comes down to luck in the end anyway? Well, if you start off at let's say 75% likely to have Gender A, and only 25% likely to have Gender B, and then by doing a few easy sway tactics, you can get to 55-45, wouldn't you take that, even if you are still more likely to have an opposite?

When I swayed with DS 4 and then DD, I knew I had a better than 50-50 shot at a boy from the get-go. My thinking was, if I could GET to 50-50 from where I was, I'd be thrilled with that and would take the flip of the coin at that point. If you start off with odds of 80-20, you'd have to have 5 kids before getting your DG (on average, and some people would have to go even higher if the dice didn't fall their way). Most people don't want that many kids, so if we can sway those odds to get our DG a little sooner, on kid 2 or 3 or 4, that's great.

Swaying can never, ever, ever be a guarantee, unfortunately. But it can work and it can even work for you after a failed sway.

May the odds be ever in your favor!

reserved for "when sways attack" follow up

missing links to the readme first's in first post

We're fixing that thank you!!!