BOY OR GIRL? IT DEPENDS ON THE MALE PARTNER

This story starts in 1962. I was a very young doctor, just started a new job at a newly opened Medical school as a lecturer. It was my very first day, at my first job after completing my training. Those days there was no ultrasound, not even an x-ray machine nearby. My registrar called me to this new admission in the labour ward a woman was in established labour, who had never seen a doctor throughout her entire pregnancy. She had an enormous belly. It was difficult to feel anything. I expected it to be a twin pregnancy with too much fluid. We had no idea about her blood count. She told us she is trying for a male child and already has six daughters .Within minutes of her arrival the first child was born, the second child was already in a big hurry to arrive in the world , her belly was still somewhat biggish, however I gave her the injections to prevent bleeding which  is given after twin birth, then suddenly I realised that there was another baby, I had never witnessed  a triplet birth and never thought of it, we rushed a bit, to save getting  this baby trapped  after the injection, but luckily this baby arrived safely. Guess what, all the babies were girls well formed all normal with good weights between 4.5 lbs to 5 lbs. I suddenly felt very sad. I did not know how to tell the parents I told them of a family who had 8 daughters hoping for a son one day they all became very successful doctors. Here with this lower middle class family I was worried about their feeding and schooling.  60 years on, since I still think of what happened to them. In some countries there is such a fanaticism about having a son to carry the family name. Sadly the women are always blamed however it is the fathers Y chromosome which is responsible for the sex of the baby. In humans there are two sex chromosomes X and Y. The females have XX and male are XY. When a baby is being formed, an X chromosome comes from the mother and Y from the father, if there is a Y chromosome then the baby will be male. There is a 50 /50 chance in nature what will happen.  There are a few theories. The sperm can be male or female depending on what a particular man has inherited. The male are divided as mm, mf, and ff, men with mm sperm will mostly have boys and ff will mostly have girls. This varies in different generations.  The female sperm is longer stronger and also lives longer so a few theories were suggested that if you want to have a female child work out your ovulation and refrain from having sex two to three days before that, by the time you ovulate your male sperms may have demised, and if you want a male child have sex as close to ovulation as possible the fast running sperm will be able to fertilize the egg. In the 21^st century ovulation can be worked out by temperature charts, and ultrasounds, even an artificial inoculation of sperm can be done on the precise day. This in my very brief experience proved excellent. In more sophisticated medical situations where sexing is required for prevention of sex linked diseases, a micro sort system is recommended in preference to per implantation biopsy and intra villous sampling. Stories also go about what position you adopt during sex for a boy or girl. Inherited billionaires have more boys. People who have more brothers have more sons and vice versa. How do we guess in modern times when everybody has only one or two siblings? To my way of thinking the ovulation technique seems more scientific. Poor King Henry the VIII was not aware of any of this, and that it was he who was responsible for the sex of his child and not his queens.