Can a spinning wedding ring correctly guess the sex of your baby? What about the fact you’re carrying high, is that a sure sign of a baby girl?
Probably not … but it is always fun to try out those baby gender predicting old wives’ tales while you’re pregnant.
We gave a few of the baby gender tests a try – just for a bit of fun – and the results were quite surprising.
It was hardly scientific, but we recruited 11 of our pregnant Bub Hub members and each of them performed the 10 gender predicting old wives tales listed below. They checked back in once their babies were born so we could check the results!
Of course, the chance of correctly picking the gender of a baby is 50/50 so we were quite surprised that FIVE of the tests correctly predicted the baby’s gender more than 50 per cent of the time. Those ‘correct’ tests were …
The Baby’s Heart Rate Test (80 per cent)
The Ring Test (67 per cent)
The Carrying High or Low Test (60 per cent)
The Watermelon or Basketball Belly Test (60 per cent)
A Girl Steals Your Looks Test (54 per cent)
RESULT: The best way to predict your unborn baby’s gender is to check its heart rate followed by the old-fashioned wedding ring test!
The rest of the tests didn’t go so well. The Craving Sweet or Sour test was only right 50 per cent of the time, the same percentage as a pure guess. The theory that if dad puts on sympathy weight then you’re having a boy was only correct in 36 per cent of cases.
The most surprising result was perhaps Mother’s Intuition. Turns out we aren’t a particularly intuitive bunch as we were only right 45 per cent of the time!
Here are the full results:
Heartbeat 8/10 = 80%
Ring Test 6/9 = 67%
Carrying high or low 6/10 = 60%
Watermelon or basketball belly 6/10 = 60%
Girl steals your looks 6/11 = 54%
Craving sweet or sour 4/8 = 50%
Chinese Gender 5/11 = 45%
Mum’s intuition 5/11 = 45%
Linea nigra 5/11 = 45%
Dad gaining weight 4/11 = 36%
The gender predicting tests we performed:
1. The Ring Test.
Find a ring and thread a strand of your hair or string through it. Dangle the ring over the top of your belly and wait for it to begin moving. Watch to see whether the ring swings from side-to-side like a pendulum or in a circle. Apparently the ring test predict ALL your children so if you already have a child the ring will spin one way, then stop, then spin again to predict the second child and so on … CIRCLE is girl, SIDE-TO-SIDE is boy.
2. Chinese Gender Chart
You can calculate your lunar age and month of conception then use them to predict your baby’s gender using this Chinese Gender Chart
3. Mother’s intuition
What do you think? Does it ‘feel’ like you’re having a baby girl or are you pretty sure there’s a boy in there?
4. A girl steals your looks
Are people telling you that you look radiant? Are you blooming or blemishing. Apparently a girl steals your looks so if you’re looking fabulous it is a boy. If you’re not looking so hot then it is a girl.
5. Are you carrying high or low?
If you’re carrying low then it is a boy and a girl is high.
6. Have you had cravings?
If you crave sweet things it’s because your baby is a girl, sour/savoury it’s a boy
7. How’s your Linea Nigra?
The linea nigra can sometimes appear on your belly when you’re pregnant. It’s a brownish line running down the middle of your belly to your pubic area. If you get a línea nigra and it runs from your pubic area and beyond your belly button then it is a boy. If you don’t get it, or if it stops at or below your belly button it is a girl.
8. How fast is baby’s heartbeat?
You’ll need results from one of your scans to do this gender predicting test. Enter the results on this Baby Heart Rate Gender site
9. Is the father gaining weight?
If the dad is putting on sympathy pregnancy weight then it is a boy, if not, it is a girl.
10. Are you carrying a watermelon or basketball?
If you look like you swallowed a oddly shaped watermelon it’s a girl, if it is a nice round basketball it’s a boy!
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Thanks to the following BH members who took part: jakobysmum, shanstar, dicey, kitikali, Shel82, Poinciana, moonlily, Chase, MummyToTwoGirls, IsaRob, LG, huggingwinnie, mlks, mkmills30, jenrose, Langgymummy and shull
Image credit: katrinaelena/123RF Stock Photo