Now it's official - males really do cause more problems during labour, according to Dr Eogan's results. "We found that women who carried male infants had longer labours, more foetal distress and were more likely to require assistance during delivery.
Women giving birth to boys are more likely to experience complications than those giving birth to girls, an Irish study has … found.
My general response is that it's a 50/50 chance that a woman will have a boy or a girl. But that's not exactly true – there's actually a slight bias toward male births. The ratio of male to female births, called the sex ratio, is about 105 to 100, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Nature is designed to favour the conception of boys from September to November and girls from March to May because of an evolutionary mechanism aimed at keeping the overall sex ratio as near to 50:50 as possible, the scientists said.
Since sperm are equally divided into X and Y chromosome sperm, the chances of having a boy or a girl should be equal. So why do some families have all girls or all boys? Each time a sperm meets an ovum, there is a 50% chance that it will make a boy and a 50% chance that it will make a girl.
Researchers have found that severe morning sickness (called hyperemesis gravidarum) is slightly more common in pregnancies where the baby is a girl, which could reflect the differences in hCG. There are plenty of other hormones at work in pregnancy, whatever the sex of the fetus.
The truth is your baby's sex has very little to do with the length of pregnancy.
Or that if you feel your baby moving more on the right side, then you're probably having a boy. But there's no evidence that there's a difference between the movements of boys and girls in the womb (Medina et al 2003).
An old wives' tale holds that a difficult pregnancy means the baby will be a boy. That is folklore, but in recent years, several studies examining tens of thousands of births have indicated that a male baby may in fact be slightly more likely to result in complications.
Only 7.6 percent percent of male babies and 5.5 percent of female babies were in the womb 42 weeks or longer. Males were also 1.5 times more likely to be born at 43 weeks or longer. The researchers noted that the most common reason for prolonged pregnancies is an error in calculating the due date.
There are also both personal and environmental factors that affect the average sex ratio. The chance of having a boy appears to decline with the mother's age, the father's age and the number of children the family already has.
You've probably heard people say that if your baby isn't very active in the womb (uterus), you're likely to have a girl. Or that if you feel your baby moving around earlier, or more often, you're probably having a boy. However, your baby's gender cannot be predicted based on the activity levels.
Most experts believe that girls reach initial developmental milestones earlier than boys, such as talking, developing hand-eye coordination and controlling their emotions. This latter gender difference is the result of hormones.
Why Are Some Babies Born Early? Babies born before 37 weeks are premature. A premature birth is more likely to happen when a mother has a health problem — like diabetes — or does harmful things during her pregnancy, like smoke or drink. If she lives with a lot of stress, that also can make her baby be born too early.
Most babies (92%) in Australia are born at term (37–41 weeks), with 32% at early term (37 or 38 weeks) and 60% at full term (39–41 weeks).
The battle of the sexes begins at birth, with newborn girls more strongly genetically programmed than boys to withstand acute infection. A new study shows newborn girls have an innate genetic advantage when it comes to potentially dangerous infections.
The key to the research is this: Male embryos and fetuses are known to be weaker.
The hCG levels in female-bearing pregnancies increase significantly, whereas they decrease in male-bearing pregnancies [1–3].
It analyzed the population of Sweden since 1932 and debunked the myth that having all boys or all girls runs in the family. It's been found that the gender of a family's children is essentially random. “We found individuals don't have an innate tendency to have offspring of one or the other gender,” said Dr.
More boys out of necessity
Science has a theory as to why we have evolved to have more boys. “Because of the one X and one Y chromosome, boys are more susceptible to stress in utero and early infancy,” says Dr Behie. This means we have evolved to have more boys as sadly some may not survive infancy.
To explain this finding, they examined the sex ratio and birth order of 1,403,021 children born to 700,030 couples. Overall, 51.2% of the first births were male. However, families with boys were significantly more likely than expected to have another boy (biologic heterogeneity).
Another myth that persists is that a low-lying belly during pregnancy is a sign of a boy. Some people believe that a baby boy will sit lower in the womb than a baby girl, causing the pregnant woman's belly to hang lower. However, this belief is also not supported by scientific evidence.