babies

My best friend is pregnant. She recently asked on her blog for advice about how to discover the gender of her baby since her doctor told her they wouldn't tell her this (yet?).

I was reading in The Guardian yesterday that male babies are born more often to mothers with higher levels of testosterone in their systems. Eggs with higher levels of testosterone, when fertilised, are more likely to become male babies. Scientists are speculating about why this happens, but for the moment the article writes that "tough/confident/domineering (insert value-laden adjective of your choice) women tend to have greater levels of the hormone than their normal/feminine/doormat (ditto) counterparts--ergo they give birth to more boys." This idea explains why more boys are born after a war, for example, since stress also increases testosterone levels.

So one way to get pregnant with a boy, I could conclude, is to have high levels of stress. Ant and I certainly don't intend on having kids anytime soon, and possibly not at all, but we do have elevated levels of stress at the moment. As for Sonya, she will have to wait and see; we should probably wait until she has several babies before saying anything about her testosterone levels.