Conference hydra::dejavu

>    Usually infallible.

Well, that's an interesting mixture. Either
something is infallible or it usually works.

(In any case, it's not infallible).

John D.

    Ultrasound is infallible if you use the correct picture to determine
    gender (the angle of the picture shows whether or not the child has
    testicles or not).  It is when the picture is used to see if the child
    has a penis or not that is fallible.  Little boys can hide theirs, and
    little girls can have a finger or thumb in the wrong place at the right
    time (when the picture is taken).  So usually infallible, to me,
    implies that if used correctly, it is infallible.
    
    other things used are how you carry the child (I don't remember details
    on that one).
    
    Beth

    Most people would say that looking at the child after it was born was
    an infallible method of determining its gender, but alas this is
    untrue. There are sometimes mistakes made and the child's true gender
    only shows up at puberty. Admittedly this is very rare and requires the
    child to have some deformity of the genitals, but it stops the method
    from being infallible.

    Re the ultrasonic scan. You appear to think that this process is like a
    photograph, in that it is a snapshot image. This is not the case it is
    a continuous process and if the child's hand was in the way it is a
    simple job to move the scanner and look from another angle.

    Jamie.

Re the ultrasonic scan. My wife is about halfway through
her second pregnancy. Each visit to the doctor she gets scanned.
(Checking for head size and so on). The small machine the
doctor uses gives an image which is quite difficult to
interpret. The picture is a 'slice' down through the
abdomen. It's grey and it's moving and very fuzzy. Sometimes
the image is clear - it's a head, or a hand. But I can
assure you that looking for a pair of testicles on a
foetus which is smaller than your hand and which moves around
is not as easy as taking a picture. And there are enough
reports of it failing to assert that it's not infallible.

Esther just went for an amniocentesis. They use a larger,
more sophisticated machine for that (you want to be as
accurate as possible). Even in this case, the image is 
hard for a layman to interpret (I know, I just stood there
while an expert pointed out things).

The expert thought he could probably have sexed our baby
if we had wanted it, but we decided not to try to find
out.

Esther is convinced it's a boy anyway!

I call it SaraPatrick. :-)

John D.

    They have much more sophisticated machines than that. The one they use
    on hearts has full colour and sound. I think that later in pregnancy
    they could give you a all but definitive result on one of them as you
    can actually see the each valve in the heart opening and closing on the
    screen.

    Jamie.

Okay. So what we're really coming round to is:
it's close to infallible later in pregnancy and
with an expensive 3D scanner.

John D.

    A much more certain method is to take some of the fluid from the womb
    and checking for XX or XY chromosomes.

    Jamie.

    What I really wanted was old wives tales, folksy methods and the like,
    such as pendulums etc........
    
    It gets boring when you have something that's 99% accurate !!
    
    /A

    When I was pregnent with my twins I had ultrasound scans quite often.
    The doctor that read them told me that he was pretty sure they
    were boys.  Everyone else told me that I was carrying them like
    boys.  A friend of my mothers went to a palm reader in Framingham
    one day towards the end of my pregnency and the palm reader told
    her that she knew someone that was going to have identical twin girls
    that would have blond hair and green eyes.  I have identical blond haired,
    hazel eyed (greenish-brown) girls....
    
    spooky huh?  

Re -2 (/A)

>    It gets boring when you have something that's 99% accurate !!

Oh please may I borrow this sentence from you?
I meet statisticians every now and then....

:-):-)
Arie

    Be my guest Arie .....!
    
    /A
    
    

    
    
                The only "Old Wives Tale" that I know about says carrying
    the baby high -- its a girl; low its a boy. What is high, what is low?
    I'm not sure. My sister-in-law has correctly dreamed the sex of her six
    children. 
    
                               Later,
                                Mark
    
    
    ps. My mother, definatly an old wife, says her two boys kicked lots
    while her daughter was less active.
    
    

    Here is a nic story re: Babies...
    
    A friend of mine is pregnant. Before she knew she definately was
    pregnant, she was getting ready to retire to bed, when she heard 
    a voice say to her "YOU ARE WITH CHILD".
    
    She dismissed it as wishful thinking and got into bed. While she was
    laying down trying to go to sleep she said she had the impression she
    was floating in space surrounded by the stars, she looked toward the
    moon and could see a fetus within its light. At that moment her
    boyfriend said.... "wow can you see the baby".
    
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    
    Pretty neat huh... her boyfriend has since said that he has sometimes
    seen the aura of the child and can feel its presence, both are
    convinced that it is a boy.
    
    If you have a friend that can see auras really clearly try that !
    
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    ^|^ AMANDA ^|^