Boy or Girl? Mothers have a Say
There are many Old Wives' Stories and Words of Wisdom in different cultures on how to control the gender of your baby. Some Chinese look up mother’s age at conception and the month of conception in special charts to predict whether he baby will be a boy or a girl. In other folk tales, if the mother's skin is soft during pregnancy, it means she is carrying a girl. There is also a belief that more boys are conceived on odd numbered days and when there is Full moon. Some suggest that sweet food and vegetables in mother's diet induce girls while salty food and red meat induce boys.
Of course, diabetics and people with hypertension (high blood pressure) should definitely not follow this part of the folklore. There are also simpler suggestions like putting wooden spoon under your bed and a pink ribbon under your pillow to increase your chances of a baby girl (and I guess to also make sure your husband doesn't snore too loud!). Science DISMISSES these folk tales due to lack of empirical evidence. But recently new research by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford provides the first evidence that a child’s sex is associated with the mother’s diet AROUND THE TIME OF CONCEPTION, suggesting that although gender is genetically determined by fathers, mothers seem to be able to favor the development of one sex of infant rather than another. In summary, mothers using high-carb diets like cereals, bread, pastries, cookies around the time of conception were more likely to have baby boys than those on restricted calories (meat, etc.). This can explain why there seems to be more baby boys in rural areas ("Roosta") or less industrialized poor countries. For complete article see: http://www.biosciences.ex.ac.uk/latestnews/07_2008.php