If you have chosen to learn the sex of your unborn child while you are pregnant, the news most likely cannot arrive soon enough. After all, the ability to see your life as a parent of a small boy or girl is a significant milestone in your prenatal experience. Before your child makes their grand entry into the world, you might wish to find out their sex if you’re biting at the bit and worrying about baby names. Several tests are available nowadays to identify the sex of a newborn. Here are all the ways you may obtain this information, along with the duration of time you’ll have to wait for a response. In this blog, we will discuss who, when, and how to determine the sex of the baby.

Who determines the sex of the baby?

It is up to either parent to decide. The odds of having a boy and a girl are around 50% and 50%, respectively, for almost everyone. All we can tell is that the gender of the child at birth is determined by the father’s sperm. His sperm will produce half girls and half boys. The sperm that reaches the egg first determines the sex of the resulting child. Everything would be left to chance in an ideal world. The odds of each kind of sperm getting to the egg first would be equal.

Furthermore, every type of egg would have an equal probability of fertilization and full development into a kid. But the world isn’t ideal, as you are aware.  The child’s sex might be influenced by specific variables.  There is more proof of this occurring in the animal kingdom, as you will see below, but it also occurs in humans. Every year, a little more boys than girls are born into the world. Yet pinpointing the precise cause of this is difficult.

An ancient hypothesis proposed that sperm with a smaller Y chromosome are somewhat faster than those with a bigger X chromosome. Therefore, there’s a chance that sperm carrying Y will reach the egg first. However, it appears that this is most likely untrue. Sperm with a Y appear to swim at the same pace as those with an X.

Is the gender of the baby determined by the father?

Two sex chromosomes, sometimes known as gonadotrophs, dictate an individual’s gender. Females are referred to as homogametic sex since they normally have two copies of the same sex chromosome (XX). Males are referred to as heterogametic sex since they normally have two different sex chromosomes (XY). There are exceptions to these generalizations in the situations of female XY patients, male XXX patients, and other disorders.
In the XY sex-determination system, the male-provided sperm contributes either a Y or an X chromosome, resulting in female (XX) or male (XY) children, respectively. The female-provided ovum contributes an X chromosome. As a result, it is said that the father decides the child’s sex.

In which week is the baby’s gender developed?

Up until nine weeks of pregnancy, to determine the sex of the baby the internal organs are monitored, the uterus and ovaries in females, and the testes in boys look the same. It takes around 11 weeks for the external sex organs to begin to diverge from one another: the penis in boys and the clitoris and labia majora in girls. Even then, it takes a few more weeks before it is easy to distinguish between boys and girls on an ultrasound. Around week four or five of pregnancy, a few little bulges emerge between your baby’s legs, which are the beginnings of the external genitals. The internal sex organs are developing from a tissue ridge on either side of your baby’s abdomen at around the same time. The kidneys, which remove waste from the blood and create urine, are likewise descended from these ridges.

How to reveal your baby’s gender?
There are several ways to determine the sex of the baby before birth if you’re interested. At about 20 weeks of pregnancy, your anatomy ultrasound test is when it happens most frequently. Though your kid could not be in a position that allows the sonographer to see the genitalia, keep in mind that it’s not always 100% correct. When carrying non-identical twins or multiples, ultrasound scans are especially helpful; genetic tests look for the presence of the male-specific Y chromosome, which indicates a male baby; therefore, these tests can determine that at least one of the babies is male or that all of the babies are female, but they cannot determine the sex of baby separately.

Where can you discover the sex of the baby?
A pregnant person must give a blood sample for an early infant gender DNA test, also known as a non-invasive prenatal genetic test (NIPT), and return the sample to the lab for analysis. With a vast nationwide network of sample collectors, Choice DNA can set up a blood sample collection at your house, a walk-in facility, or another convenient place. Within three days of your samples arriving at our laboratory, you will receive a confidential email with a report detailing your findings.

Conclusion

What or who decides a baby’s sex? It all comes down to simple, old-fashioned science and chance and occurs very early in the process of fertilization. Your chances of having a boy or girl are determined by the two sex chromosomes found in both the egg and the sperm. Although the sex of your unborn child is predetermined at fertilization, the development of the fetal genitalia won’t be visible until much later in your pregnancy. It will take your mid-pregnancy ultrasound to determine whether you are having a boy or a girl—there is often a 50:50 chance. Many procedures, such as ultrasound testing later in pregnancy or a NIPT testing option offered by different facilities, such as Choice DNA, can confirm the sex of the baby.