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Dr. Naheed Akhtar Rana - Gynecologist

MBBS, MRCOG (UK), DFFP (UK), FRCOG (UK) | Lahore

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The Shettles Method is a child conception idea that is reputed to help determine a baby's sex. It was developed by Landrum B. Shettles in the 1960s and was publicized in the book How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby
Proponents claim between 75 and 90 percent effectiveness for the method.
Medical experts do not agree that the method works. For example, the 1995 article 'Timing of Sexual Intercourse in Relation to Ovulation—Effects on the Probability of Conception, Survival of the Pregnancy, and Sex of the Baby' in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that "for practical purposes, the timing of sexual intercourse in relation to ovulation has no influence on the sex of the baby."[2]. The study tracked women’s hormone levels daily in order to determine the day of ovulation. In contrast, another study from the New England Journal of Medicine (1979) found that "[our] results ... demonstrate that insemination on different days of the menstrual cycle does lead to variations in sex ratio."[3]. While this second study was larger, it did not track the levels of LH in the blood, and used a best guess for ovulation based on cycle lengths of the women. More studies are needed to determine if the timing of insemination has any impact on the sex of a baby.

A 2006 letter[4] published by BMJ, reviewing some recent research, tries to clarify this issue. It refers that “So far, researchers have found no morphological differences between human X sperm and Y sperm"[5], which seems to dismiss the original claim of Shettles Method.