Guess what, folks--it can't be done. Unless you have a bonafide medium/psychic in your midst, hard science makes it darn near impossible to prove there is a way to determine your baby to be's gender without the aid of one of those scary blood tests or a good old ultrasound at around the 20th week of pregnancy.

But, if that is the case, then why do all these other options persist? Maybe it's simply because it's fun, or gives the new parents to be something else to think about rather than worrying that everything is ok in there (the womb). Maybe, though, there is something more to it. After all, those old wives tales the modern world has eschewed seem to turn out to be true, or at least relevant, more often than we think.

I have a pal, a guy, who, for some reason, is almost always able to tell the sex of the baby after spending time with a pregnant friend (nothing more!). Now, I know there are only two choices involved, male or female, but still--he is almost NEVER wrong!

When I was a kid, my mother had a gender predictor crystal stashed in our upstairs attic. I suppose it had been given to her as a gift for her baby shower although we never discussed it. The crystal would swing one way for a girl, the other way for a boy (either horizontally or vertically). It was from the '70s, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of it, but my guess is it was no better or worse than any of the others.

Currently, company Pink or Blue offers a home prediction kit. Jury's still out on whether it's accurate or not, but several sources say it's only right about, er, 50% of the time. Heh. A friend once told me that the gender could be determined based on how mom to be felt about the other parent to be. If mommy loves her husband, it's a boy; if she detests him, it's a girl.

Then there's the old-school thought about how a woman carries. If it's all in the middle and up high, it's a boy; if mom gets big all over an carries low, it's a girl. In my experience that has been true, but I know many women who contest that methodology too.

So, are there any gender predictors (outside the realm of hard science) that, in your experience, have proven accurate? If so, do tell!

Universal gender pic by lazzarello.