The Joy of Discovering Your Baby's Gender
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Discovering that you're pregnant is one of the most exciting things that can happen to a woman. While it is undoubtedly a joyous, life-changing occasion, it's natural for your maternal instincts to kick in, and that means worrying about the health of your unborn child in addition to being curious about whether they're a boy or girl. While worrying is perfectly natural, you can remove some of the uncertainty by having a gender scan, which will present a mum-to-be with an informative picture of the expectant arrival.
Most of us are familiar with ultrasound scans, which are also known as sonograms. Normally performed in week 12 of the pregnancy, this is often the most magical part of the process so far; for the first time, both mum and dad can lay eyes on their unborn child. This is made possible thanks to high frequency sound waves, which are directed at the mother's body using a handheld transducer. These reflected waves are then converted to an image of the baby.
While ultrasound allows parents the opportunity to see their unborn child, they also allow doctors to study the baby's blood flow and identify any blood vessels that may be narrowing or are blocked. This, fortunately, is a rare occurrence; although if detected at this early stage, the problem can be overcome with the minimum of fuss.
What ultrasounds cannot do with any certainty, however, is identify the gender of your baby. This is because some foetuses are ambiguous. While this doesn't bother some parents who want to keep their unborn child's gender under wraps until he or she is born, others are keen to know in advance. This is useful from both a curiosity and practicality point of view; perhaps dad wants to decorate the new child's bedroom but is holding off on the pink or blue wallpaper until he knows for sure what the gender is.
Step forward, then, gender scans, which can be performed after 16 to 36 weeks' gestation. These will determine the gender of your baby with 90 per cent accuracy, and the sonographer will not reveal whether the unborn child is a boy or girl unless they know for certain. Parents can mark the occasion by ordering their scan on DVD, so they'll be able to share those precious first moments for ever.
If you're interested in gender scans London is the city where the service is most widely available, with clinics performing scans in the north, east and west of the capital, while the service is also available in Hertfordshire.
Up until recently, parents-to-be relied on certain tried and tested methods to predict their baby's gender outcome, and unfortunately, not all of these were accurate. For example, if during your first trimester you didn't suffer from morning sickness, you craved meat and cheese and other proteins or salty food and your skin often became dry, it is said that you were most likely to give birth to a boy.
By contrast, if your baby's heart beats more than 140 times per minute, your left breast is larger than your right and during the first 12 weeks you did suffer from morning sickness, you were more likely to give birth to a baby girl.
While it may be fun to entertain pregnancy folklore, it's probably best to stick to the science. Did you know, for example, that it's possible to have an anomaly scan after the gender scan? Taking place between 18 and 24 weeks gestation, the scan will accurately assess the unborn child's growth measurement, while the position of the placenta will be identified and noted down. If the parents-to-be are yet to have a gender scan, it's also possible to determine whether your baby is a boy or girl at this stage.
During an anomaly scan, your consultant will take four of your baby's measurements; head circumference, abdominal circumference, femur length and biparietal diameter of the head. The scan will also produce information on foetal development by concentrating on particular anatomical structures including the heart, spine, head, kidneys and stomach. What this grants parents is complete peace of mind ahead of the birth; all their questions can be answered, and at the same time they can learn as much about their impending new arrival as possible.
Discovering the gender of your unborn child is a wonderful thing. Not only will it allow you and your partner to plan ahead, it will also alleviate any concerns that you have regarding pregnancy and birth, leaving the pair of you to look forward to one of life's miracles.
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