Some women consider learning the gender of their baby prior to birth akin to opening a present before Christmas, while others can scarcely wait to know. Until the rise of modern technologies such as ultrasound and prenatal testing, most women resigned themselves to waiting 40 weeks before they could find out if they were having a boy or a girl. Today, by utilizing prenatal diagnostic procedures, along with her doctor's guidance and advice, a woman can often find out the sex of her unborn baby before 20 weeks of gestation.
Instructions
1. Calculate the gestational age of your baby. The American Pregnancy Association recommends counting weeks, starting with the first day of your last menstrual period. Though you probably conceived 11-21 days later than this, doctors use this estimated standard to measure the gestational age of an unborn baby. If your doctor conducted an early ultrasound to date the pregnancy, use this information.
2. Decide if you want to pursue a clinical procedure, such as genetic testing or ultrasound, to find out the gender of your baby. Genetic testing procedures such as amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS) offer the earliest and most accurate ways to determine gender in utero, according to the Mayo Clinic. Fetal ultrasounds, which involve using high-frequency sound waves to produce images, are a safe procedure commonly used during pregnancy to examine the fetus.
3. Schedule your ultrasound or genetic testing appointment. According to the American Pregnancy Association, CVS can be done between 10 and 13 weeks of pregnancy and amniocentesis testing can be performed between 14 and 20 weeks. Conducting a gender ultrasound between 18-20 weeks of pregnancy generally yields the most accurate results.
4. Ask the technician or doctor performing the procedure if they can determine the gender and inquire as to the accuracy of the results. Amniocentesis and CVS testing examine the genetic make-up of your baby and are 99% accurate, according to the American Pregnancy Association. Ultrasound results can be less certain, since several factors, including the position of the baby and your stage of pregnancy, can impact their accuracy.
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