For the past five generations, the Lawrie family had produced one male offspring after the next, without a single girl. While this was looked upon favorably for many years (because male children were seen as breadwinners) Hannah Lawrie, the mother of three Lawrie boys, was desperate to have a baby girl to dress in pink and play dolls with.
So, Hannah decided to turn to a more unconventional method of pregnancy. She and her husband used a sixties-era strategy called the Shettles method – developed by Landrum B Shettles, who helped author the book, “How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby”, published in 1971.
The Shettles method is predicated on the idea that, because X chromosome sperm are slower than Y chromosome sperm, in order to conceive a female, the parents should engage in intercourse two to three days prior to ovulation. In this fashion, the X chromosome sperm arrive at the egg at the exactly moment of ovulation and the chances of conception are higher.
While the Shettles method has been disproven by scientific studies, the Lawrie family got the daughter they’d been hoping for. The family that hadn’t conceived a baby girl in two hundred years finally had their daughter. Little Myla Lawrie is four months old and the princess of the family.
