As you may have noticed, my name is Kim. Actually, my full name is Kimberly. What you may not know, however, is that my name was originally going to be Tony or Skyler. That’s an odd name for a girl, isn’t it? That’s because my parents thought I was going to be a boy. The doctor told them I was going to be a boy because of my heart rate. No one expected a girl until I was born. Boy, was that a surprise! Sonograms were just becoming common practice in the 80s, but my mom did not have one. That was 26 years ago, and times have changed.
It was said that 140+ beats per minute (BPM) was a girl and under 140 BPM was a boy. If that were true, my son would have been predicted to be a boy at some checkups, and a girl at others. Fetal heart rate does not determine the gender of your baby, and yet so many women are still convinced that their baby’s heart rate is an indication of his or her gender. Fetal heart rate does correspond well with age before nine weeks, but there is no difference between girls and boys that is significant enough to be measured. As with all gender myths, however, they have a fifty-fifty chance of being correct, and the half that end up being right are what fuel the continuation of these myths.
There are only four ways to know for sure what gender you are having: an ultrasound performed after 20 weeks, amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling, and birth. Even an ultrasound, however, depends on the technician performing it and the baby’s cooperation. Despite the obvious evidence displayed on my son’s ultrasound, my technician refused to say that he was 100% a boy. “I never make any guarantees,” she said. Sometimes, the baby refuses to “cooperate” and the technician is unable to see the sex. Amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling come with their own risks. Just one more reason to be surprised!