How to Pick Your Baby’s
Sex Gender Selection may seem like something from a sci-fi movie, but choosing whether you have a son or a daughter is an easier process than you may think! With modern fertility treatments like IVF, deciding if you want a boy or a girl is rather straightforward, and for many can be an exciting dream come true!
The gender of a baby is determined by the sperm when it fertilizes an egg. While an egg can only carry the X chromosome, the sperm can carry either an X or Y chromosome. If an embryo has an X chromosome from the mother, and an X chromosome from the father (XX), the gender will be female. If the chromosomes are a combination of X and Y, then the gender of the baby will be male (XY).
Some parents choose gender selection because they want family balancing. They already have children of one sex and want to select for a child of the opposite sex. Other parents might carry an inheritable genetic disease that is gender specific. At risk parents may want to select the opposite sex to prevent transmission. Finally, parents might have a number of other reasons for choosing gender, including previous loss or feeling better equipped to raise a child of that sex.
With gender selection, prospective parents would go through an IVF cycle and choose to do preimplantation genetic screening (PGS). To perform PGS, cells are removed from the developing embryos and the genetic makeup of these cells is then analyzed by a genetic company, allowing the gender and other genetic qualities to be known. Once a decision is made about the quality and gender of each embryo, the healthiest, highest quality candidates are selected. Parents will let the doctors know which sex they would prefer and they will have the healthiest embryos of that gender used during the re-implantation stage of the IVF procedure.
Only one embryo is transferred at a time. This helps prevent multiple pregnancy with twins, triplets, or more. By only transferring one embryo at a time, there is a higher chance of a healthier pregnancy for the mother. Having only one baby carried during a pregnancy also gives the baby the best chance of growing healthy and strong inside the uterus.
Any extra embryos are frozen and preserved for the future. This keeps the embryos safe and secure until you are ready to have another baby, and allows you to choose the gender of your next baby in the future as well!
Gender Selection in Orange County
Reproductive Health and Wellness Center offers innovative (PGT) Preimplantation Genetic Testing and IVF treatment to have the most accurate method of gender selection. To book a consultation with a fertility doctor to discuss family balancing and gender selection, call or text 949-516-0606 or go here.
At Reproductive Health and Wellness Center, we are experts at treating fertility issues. We provide the latest in cutting-edge embryo science by using the latest technologies, and we create innovative fertility plans tailored specifically to each individual. But we’re so much more.
