The growing trend for parents choosing their baby's sex
Model Chrissy Teigen sparked controversy after revealing she chose the sex of her baby daughter. Yet this sex selection – also referred to as gender selection – is on the increase, say experts. Here, one mum explains why she also picked her baby’s sex.
This page contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small amount of money if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our articles and reviews are written independently by the Netmums editorial team.
For some parents who already have two or more children – but only of one sex – they dream of having a boy or a girl to ‘balance’ their family.
And while sex selection is illegal in the UK unless there are certain serious medical grounds, increasing numbers of people are now paying to have ‘sex selection’ treatment abroad to make sure their next child is the boy – or girl – they desperately want.
This means having IVF and then using sex selection technology called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to see which embryos are male and which are female. Those of the sex you want are then implanted.
FREE NEWBORN NAPPIES
As Chrissy Teigen said about her pregnancy last year: ‘Not only am I having a girl, but I picked the girl from her little embryo. I picked her and was like, “Let's put in the girl.”'
Paul Rainsbury who runs the Rainsbury Clinic, which offers sex selection treatment in Europe, told Netmums: ‘The amount of people contacting us has trebled in the past year, approaching a couple of hundred this year.
‘It’s like anything – the more knowledge there is means the more interest from parents. There’s also a lot of word-of-mouth referrals from people who’ve successfully had treatment.
‘Many want simply to balance their family – if they have three of four girls and want a boy or vice versa. Quite a few have two or more children already and are prepared to spend their time and money to get what they want.’
‘It’s hard to put into words the deep yearning I felt for a girl’
One mum who did just that is Nicola Trathen, now 48, from Plymouth. She runs cosmetic surgery clinic Refresh South West and has four sons with husband Michael, 66 – Paul, 25, David, 23, Dan, 19 and Adam, 17.
The couple had treatment through the Rainsbury Clinic to have twin daughters Georgia and Danielle, now 13.
Nicola says: ‘From an early age I’d always imagined myself with a daughter. It’s hard to put into words the deep yearning I felt for a girl.
'I love my boys but I remember as a child I would sit with my sister and play mothers and babies and it was always girls. The feeling would not go away. It was a deep maternal need that some people may not understand.
'As it was, I went on to have three boys – I did try natural methods to have a girl but they didn't work – and when I got pregnant again, decided to have a private scan at 27 weeks to find out the baby’s sex.
'They were 98% positive it was a girl and I imagined my daughter, Zara. However I decided not to decorate the nursery pink just in case. And luckily I didn’t because my baby Zara turned out to be a boy, Adam. I was shocked but naturally absolutely adored him.'
'Having my girls has enriched the lives of our entire family'
'After that, we decided we wouldn’t have any more children if we couldn't guarantee a girl so Michael had a vasectomy. I can remember lying on the bed crying because I couldn't have a daughter.
'I even remember seeing someone in town with a little girl all dressed up and thinking, 'I'm never going to have that.' You're not upset with what you’ve got. You are traumatised by what you haven't got – it’s not an emotion you can control.
'But when Adam was two months old, I was feeding him with the TV on and I caught the end of a documentary about gender selection. I saw Dr Rainsbury saying it was possible to choose the sex of your child. I called Mike straight away and said, "That has got to be fate".
'We went for treatment at the Rainsbury Clinic where, although Michael had had a vasectomy, they were able to extract his sperm.
'I then went to Spain for IVF treatment, which worked, and I found out I was pregnant with twin girls.
'I wanted each of my boys, and was never disappointed. But it didn’t change the fact I yearned for a girl. I needed a daughter to both balance my family and to fulfil the need to have that relationship. Having my girls has enriched the lives of our entire family.’
What is sex selection?
The most common way for sex selection to be carried out is through preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). A woman has IVF and then tests are carried out on the genetic makeup of each embryo to see if it's male or female.
Some clinics also use Microsort ‘sperm sorting’ technology. This means a sperm sample is tagged with dye and then passed through a laser beam. The technology means it’s able to distinguish between X (female) and Y (male) sperm.
Dr Rainsbury says: ‘If a couple is wanting boys, the Y sperm will be injected into the woman’s eggs, and if they want girls, the X sperm.’
Where can you have sex selection treatment?
In the UK, it’s illegal to choose the sex of your child unless there are serious medical reasons – for example, you or your partner being a carrier for a genetic disease that affects only boys.
This means anyone wanting to pick the sex of their child has to go abroad, to Europe or America where it's legal.
Dr Rainsbury says: ‘‘Nothing related to gender selection can be done in the UK – it’s illegal. Instead, the woman has two to three visits to our London clinic where we down-regulate the woman’s natural hormones.
'This means using a nasal spray for 14 days – just as you do with IVF – to switch off the release of hormones which normally stimulate the ovaries. We then do the stimulation phase where the woman injects herself with a hormone to stimulate egg production.
'When I’m certain the woman is producing a good number of eggs in her ovaries – we’re looking for her to produce 10 or 12 – I will then send her abroad to a location where it’s legal to do egg collection for purposes of gender selection.
'The woman will stay abroad for about a week for egg collection and then embryo transfer. The man only has to be there one day to produce the sperm sample to fertilise the woman’s eggs.’
How much does the sex selection treatment cost?
It’s expensive – at the Rainsbury clinic one cycle costs £10,500, two cycles is £17,000 and three cycles is £20,000. That’s for all the medical treatment at home and abroad. It doesn’t include any travel or accommodation.
The cost of one round of sex selection IVF at the Fertility Institutes in New York is around £13,500.
What is the success rate of sex selection?
According to Dr Rainsbury, for couples who get pregnant, they are 100% guaranteed to get the sex they want using both the PGD and Microsort technology.
Other clinics in the US say their success rate with PDG is 99.9%. Actual pregnancy success rates vary. Yet given the women having the treatment often don’t have fertility problems (many already have two or more children) pregnancy rates can reach 80-90% by the third cycle.
Are boys or girls more popular?
According to sex selection expert Dr Jeffrey Steinberg, there’s a fairly even split in the UK on the sex parents want.
He said: ‘But we can often tell what sex they want before they tell us. We find that if it’s the woman who makes the first appointment, 70% of the time they’re going to be wanting a girl. If the man calls up, 90% of the time it’s for a boy.’
What are your thoughts about sex selection? Why not join the chat in our Coffeehouse forum, below.
