Heart Rate predicts gender? Nah.
Jordan went to the doctor yesterday, and everything looks fine. This wasn’t an ultrasound visit, so there are no new pictures. We did find out the baby’s heart rate is “in the160s”, and Jordan has officially gained 6 pounds since her last visit, which is well within the range of acceptability.
Jordan disputes the weight gain number, though. According to our bathroom scale, she’d only gained 2 pounds. Jordan says the scale at the doctor’s office is exactly the same as the one in our bathroom. But it’s a different scale than the fancier one they used last time. The change in scale is probably responsible for the weird discrepancy.
Jordan’s excited because Dr. Manning is allowing her to use Zyrtec, which will aid considerably in the fight against her wicked allergies. Her nose was incredibly red yesterday from all the sneezing and the associated battles to keep it in line.
Finally, I note there are many suggestions online that a baby’s heart rate can predict gender. After a quick Googling, it seems heart rate is not such a great crystal ball:
This has actually been a pretty popular theory in gender prediction for a long time.
The heart rate of your baby fluctuates as they grow and as they move. Heart rates start out slower, and then by 8-10 weeks run in the range of 170-200 BPM (beats per minute).
As your approach mid-pregnancy the average heart rates run between 120 – 160 BPM.
If your baby moves, his or her heart rate goes up, just as your heart rate does with movement. However, none of these is related to the gender of your baby.
A study was actually done to test this theory. The study actually shows that there is no correlation between gender and fetal heart rate. Although they did find a correlation between heart rate and gestational age prior to 9.2 weeks.
The New York Times has also debunked this theory.
Recall that we aren’t much interested in finding out the sex ahead of time anyway. So we’re okay with the indeterminacy of the heart rate. For those of you who remain curious, however, our elderly neighbor down the street assured Jordan it was a girl. And that’s at least as reliable as an internet-enabled wives tale.
For someone who doesn’t want to know gender you guys are doing a lot of research. I’m betting that you break down and ask the question. great picture by the way.
We actually weren’t researching gender. I was trying to figure out whether “heart rate” was the correct term. The first thing that came up was all these “does heart rate predict gender?” questions.