A few weeks back I wrote a post about how to conceive a girl baby and talked about both The Shettles Method for conceiving a girl and the O+12 method. I also briefly touched on the Whelan Method but to be fair didn’t write about it as much as Shettles because I didn’t have all the information.
So this post I’m going to go into more detail on the Whelan Method and also look at some other sex selection theories as well so you have all the information.
If you are trying to get pregnant, you probably want to know some different methods in getting pregnant that people have used successfully. Well I’ve done a few searches online and it seems that there isn’t a ‘guaranteed’ way to conceive a baby but there are a few things to help sway the odds into your favor so you have a better chance of getting pregnant.
If you are trying to achieve a pregnancy then you know that there are only a few days per month that you are able to conceive properly that results in getting pregnant, and those days are when you ovulate (when your body releases the egg ready to be fertilized).
However determining when you ovulate is not as simple as having intercourse around Day 14 – the supposed magical day that all women are supposed to ovulate – because every woman is different and Day 14 is just an average day. You might ovulate later or earlier.
And it isn’t just ovulation that you need to know to get pregnant; you also have to have lots of fertile egg white cervical fluid, be healthy and not stressed, and avoid certain foods such as caffeine and peas (yes ordinary green peas have been known to have contraceptive qualities) and of course your partner needs to have lots of healthy sperm too.
With all that we have to do to conceive a baby – is it any wonder that so many of us have trouble getting pregnant?
For the rest of this article, I’m going to assume that you are in perfect health and your partner’s sperm count is fine, and talk about how to determine the best time to conceive to result in a pregnancy.
There are many ways to determine when you ovulate but the most common ways are: charting your basal body temperature, using ovulation predictor kits, using a saliva fertility monitor like Maybe Baby, feeling for the position and softness of your cervix, or keeping track of when you produce fertile egg white cervical mucus (ewcm).
Once you have determined your ovulation day, you should aim to have intercourse every day starting five days before right up to the day after you ovulation day. This will give you the best chances of catching the egg so that you can conceive and fall pregnant.
There have been some rumors on one of the fertility message boards that I read that taking cranberry juice or cranberry tablets will improve your chances of conceiving a baby. Now I knew that cranberry can help if you have a UTI infection, but can it help you to get pregnant?
From the research that I’ve found, taking cranberry does not help pregnancy per se, but it can influence the gender of your child – which is great news if you are trying for a girl baby.
What it does is make the cervical mucus (cm) more acidic and therefore more hostile to sperm. But because the female sperm are stronger, they are more likely to be able to survive and reach the egg.
Cranberry can also interfere with the amount of cervical mucus that you produce, often drying up your CM, again making it harder for the male sperm to navigate through since sperm need a good amount of egg white cervical mucus (ewcm) to swim through to reach the fallopian tubes.
So who should take cranberry?
If you are trying for a girl and you have no issue with the amount of fertile ewcm that you produce then by all means take cranberry juice or tablets (either is fine). At the very least you’ll reduce your chances of contracting a UTI! Lol
If you are trying simply to fall pregnant, then it’s probably best to avoid the cranberry because it can dry up your mucus making it more difficult to conceive if you are already having problems in that area.
If you currently have a UTI and are taking cranberry tablets or drinking cranberry juice to try and clear it up, but also are trying to conceive then make sure you drink lots of water as well to make sure it doesn’t interfere with the amount of ewcm that you produce.
Throughout history people have been trying to fall pregnant with a baby of their chosen gender so trying to put the odds of conceiving a boy or girl, whatever your preference may be, into your favor is nothing new. Fortunately we now know a lot more about how the body and especially conception works so these days we don’t need to rely on wives tales or myths about what we need to do.
This article will focus primarily on some of the strategies and methods for conceiving a boy using natural methods (rather than laboratory techniques). While choosing the gender of your child via a laboratory is usually more successful (although there still have been many cases of couples not getting the child they thought they were getting), trying methods at home, such as the Shettles Method is safe and doesn’t cost you anything.
Since I’ve already mentioned it, the Shettles Method was introduced in the 1970’s by Dr Landrum Shettles MD PhD and is probably one of the best known methods for falling pregnant with a child with the gender of your choosing.
He discovered that the sperm carrying the X chromosome (female sperm), while stronger and larger, was slower than the sperm carrying the Y chromosome (male sperm) which tended to be faster and lighter but didn’t last as long.
He then surmised that to take advantage of these characteristics, to increase your chances of having a boy baby that you must have intercourse as close to ovulation as possible so that the male sperm would reach the egg first and fertilize it.
Interestingly the Shettles Method is far more successful in producing boy babies (they claim an 85% success rate for males) than it is for girl babies (only a 77% success rate) which is believed to be because it is easier to pinpoint ovulation as it happens rather than 4 days beforehand.
Of course this method is still not 100% guaranteed but it does seem very effective for conceiving a boy baby, so let’s look at the method in more detail.
The Shettles Method for conceiving a boy:
Because timing is important for the Shettles Method, you need to know when the woman is just about to ovulate. This means testing with ovulation predictor kits (OPK’s), body basal temperature methods (charting) or ovulation saliva monitors to pinpoint when you are due to ovulate.
Then you should aim to have intercourse as close to ovulation as possible. The Shettles Method says to start trying 2 days before you ovulate, right up to your ovulation day.
Theoretically this will ensure that the faster male sperm will reach the egg first and be ready to fertilize it before the female sperm have a chance to reach it.
He also has said certain positions favor a boy including any that deposit the sperm right at the cervix so they don’t have as far to travel. These positions include any deep penetration, like the doggie – rear entry positions.
Shettles also advocated that the woman should orgasm either before or at the same time as the man, since this not only helps push the sperm further up the uterus, but also creates a more alkaline pH environment in the woman which makes it easier for the sperm to live longer.
To Try the Shettles Method:
- Have intercourse everyday starting from 2 days before your expected ovulation day right up to the day you ovulate.
- Use the doggie style or other deep penetration position.
- The woman should have an orgasm
- If possible keep the pH levels of your vagina as alkaline as possible – orgasm should take care of that, but also eating thing like red meat and salty snacks will help.
- Men should avoid wearing tight clothes or having hot showers.
This is a good strategy to get a baby boy (of course no plan will ensure it’s a baby boy 100%) but it will put the odds in your favor.
Trying to choose the sex of your baby may seem controversial to some, but to other’s the longing for a child of a certain gender is enough to want to try many different methods to help conceive a girl or boy. While this article will focus specifically on how to conceive a girl using natural techniques that you can try at home, let’s first look at the history behind the techniques:

Whether you are attempting pregnancy for the first time or have been trying to get pregnant for a while you should know that conceiving is not quite as simple as your biology teacher would make you believe. In fact each month, even a perfectly healthy couple only has around a 25% chance of conceiving a baby.
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