My ultrasound is on July 31. Though I personally feel I will hear blue (for the reasons why I am so convinced, check out the update in the link above), but I do still have a little hope alive. Please keep me in your prayers that I will first and foremost see a healthy baby, and then throw that pink dust my way!!
For those of you who are regular visitors to the Gender Swaying board, you know that I’ve been hanging out there and answering questions. I actually think that I need to explain what exactly it is that I believe, and why I give the advice I do on the Gender Swaying board, even at times when it is not in line with my own beliefs.
When I answer questions on the Gender Swaying board, I assume that the vast, vast majority of people who are on there, are wanting to have basically a traditional sway with some aspects of the Trivers-Willard hypothesis thrown in there. Therefore, I give advice that is rooted in the traditional IG sway. I figure, people want to stick to the fundamentals of the IG diet, they want to do timing and douching, they plan on taking supplements, and on top of that they want to incorporate exercise, weight loss, skipping breakfast, and keeping blood glucose levels down. I assume that the vast majority of people want to do everything within their power to sway, even things that I personally don’t agree with or think are effective.
Consequently, that’s what I advise people to do. This makes for a pretty tough and restrictive sway, and a lot of people accept that and are willing to do whatever it takes so that they feel they‘ve done everything in their power to conceive their desired gender. However, I have been noticing an undercurrent on the board lately, where people are not getting pregnant and they seem to be blaming it on the diet, even going so far as to suggest that the diet is dangerous or making people sick.
I find this all to be very troubling and so I really feel that I must clarify a few things.
I do think the IG diet is very restrictive, and as I have said often, that is why it works. If you have read my blog, you know that the diet that I personally feel to be adequate for swaying is actually not anywhere near as restrictive as the IG diet. But, since the vast majority of people want to do as many aspects of the traditional sway as they possibly can, I feel that on the Gender Swaying board, I should answer questions with that in mind. So I may tell people to follow a far more restrictive diet than I personally followed, and a far more restrictive diet than I even feel is necessary, simply because I know that is what most people want to do. Most people want to do 110%.
Even though I do feel the IG diet is very restrictive and limited, I do think that it is safe, and in no way makes people less fertile or affects their health in the long term (though it can make you feel like crap while you‘re on it!!). If anything, it may even HELP fertility by increasing intake of full-fat dairy products.
Being on such a limited diet is hard, hard work, and it wears people down over the course of time. Because of this, I think it’s very easy for people to make the diet into the bad guy. They’re tired of being on it, they’re tired of denying themselves the foods they want to eat, and so if they don’t get pregnant right off the bat, that’s the first thing they want to drop.
But to my mind, that is the absolute worst thing that people can do. Firstly because the diet has too much supporting evidence backing it up - say what you want to about a study or two supporting moon phases or lime juice freezing Y sperm, but the idea that lower calorie, lower protein, lower nutrient diets sway pink has dozens of scientific studies from many different sources backing it up.
In the course of a typical pink sway, people are injecting sperm-hostile douches and gels into the vaginal environment, taking supplements that can affect hormones, CM, and monthly cycles dramatically, and trying to get pregnant from one round of sex that takes place well outside of your optimal fertility zone after your husband has abstained for 7 days or even longer. Some people are going onto birth control pills to move their ovulation into the proper moon phase and others are actually putting sperm into turkey basters and shooting it full of lime juice (lime juice has been used in some third world countries as birth control!!) I’m not saying there is anything wrong with doing this, but for people to be doing all these things and then blame their diets for them not getting pregnant, something just does not compute there.
But, when I answer questions on the GS board, I operate under the assumption that people want to do all these things because they want to give 110% (even though that’s not the choice that I personally would make) and I help them to incorporate all these things into their sway. So again, to state clearly and for the record what my own personal viewpoint is - I think everyone should follow the diet to the absolute best of their ability, whether it is one of the diets from my blog, the IG diet, or some combination of the two. (IMO the French Gender Diet does very little to sway at all). I think you should lose at least a little weight while you are TTC, and I think you should either exercise a lot or not at all. I think it’s a good idea to skip breakfast and eliminate snacking and very large meals, especially during the days leading up to O and during the 2WW. And that’s ALL I really, honestly believe in.
If a person wants to try timing, supplements, douching, or any of the other methods, by all means, go for it and I will help you however I can. I can completely understand that you would want to leave no stone unturned in your quest. But if you aren’t getting pregnant, I strongly urge that rather than giving up on the aspects of swaying that actually have a decent amount of legitimate science backing them up, that you first consider dropping the things that are the most likely to be keeping you from conceiving, starting with timing and moving on from there.
For those concerned about the safety of the diet and how it affects their fertility... Throughout all of human history up until the present day, (and in most countries all around the world right now) not even the richest of the rich had access to the kinds of varied and nutritious foods that we have available to us 24-7 at the nearest grocery store. People ate seasonally, whatever food they had managed to grow and store. They had milk in the months when the cow was giving milk, they had salad only rarely in the early months of spring, they had never tasted oranges and wouldn’t have known whether a banana was something to eat or to run away from. In the winter most people subsisted on stored vegetables, salted meats, and bread, if that. Even within the last 100 years, a president campaigned on promising “a chicken in every pot” for Sunday supper, because chicken !!!once a week!!! was a luxury that only the well-off enjoyed.
Yet, during all this vast span of human existence, perfectly healthy babies were conceived and born all around the world. Millions, billions even, of healthy human beings have been not only conceived, but born, with their mothers eating diets far beneath even the most restrictive IG diet (not to mention that we are all taking folic acid and prenatal vitamins that not even our own mothers had access to). Socrates, Newton, Jefferson, Lincoln, all these great minds were conceived and carried by their mothers eating diets based on a few seasonal foods (none of which were vitamin fortified), that’s just how humanity lived and ate for tens of thousands of years.
Please keep in mind that the vitamin and heath food industries are billion-dollar industries that make their money off of convincing Americans that we are all incapable of being ‘healthy’ without buying whatever product it is that they’re selling. But people lived and had babies for 100,000 years before the invention of vitamins, frozen concentrated orange juice, and without the ability to buy grapes in February.
No one is saying that a poor diet in the long term can’t affect fertility, of course it can. But it takes time for that to happen, it doesn’t happen overnight. I personally believe that it is better to forgo EGS, throw timing out the window, douche sparingly, and get pregnant as quickly as possible, to limit the overall amount of time you have to stick to the diet. Again, some people choose not to do that, they choose to try every method available to them, and even though I don’t agree with that decision, I do support people and try and help them to sway in the way that they feel is best.