If your husband is a heavy smoker, you may be much less likely to have a son. Men who were smokers were much less likely to produce male embryos, in a study of couples using IVF with PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis):
- The men's semen samples were analyzed to determine the X:Y ratio, the number of boy-producing compared to girl-producing sperm. All samples, smokers and non-smokers alike, were found to have an equal amount of X and Y sperm.
- The sperm samples were then prepared for fertilization using the swim-up technique, which separates the healthiest, most motile sperm cells from abnormal or slow-moving sperm cells.
Among smokers, the healthy portion of sperm was found to have a higher proportion of X sperm.
The resulting embryos were analyzed using PGD, and here are the results:
- 53% male embryos were produced by non-smoking fathers.
- 32% male embryos were produced by smoking fathers.
About Maureen
Click to play the Fountains of Wayne song about Maureen!
"Maureen, you're givin' me too much information!"
My Kiddies
My DH
(And never had a fight!)
About Me
In 1999, my two sons were 4 and 2 years old, and we were ready to have another baby. I hoped to have a daughter, and I turned to the Internet to search for ways of increasing the odds of conceiving a girl. I discovered the iVillage Gender Determination Board. On the board, I found information about at-home and high-tech sex selection methods, but more importantly, I discovered I wasn't alone. I was one among a legion of mothers who longed desperately for a daughter, keeping it a secret so others wouldn't think, wrongly, that we loved our sons less, and feeling guilty becuse we're not supposed to care if a baby's a boy or a girl, "as long as it's healthy". There were, of course, also mothers hoping just as much to add a son to their all-girl family.
After a lot of research and soul-searching, my husband I decided to try MicroSort. In the fall of 2000, I became pregnant on our first MicroSort attempt, by IUI. At 20 weeks of pregnancy, we discovered we were having twins, a boy and a girl! We were thrilled to have a daughter at last, and a new son to cherish too.
During my journey to conceive a daughter, I was so grateful for the support and information volunteered by others on the boards; mothers who didn't even know me, but were willing to help me, hope for me, and cry along with me, when there was no one I could turn to "in real life". I know that without being able to talk personally with women who had tried MicroSort, I would have never gone through with this daunting, complex procedure; and that we would have never had a daughter as part of our family.
Now that my journey's finished, this Web site is just my way of giving some of that help back, to you.