Measuring heart rate in early pregnancy is a fun test to predict whether you are pregnant with a boy or girl.
What is the Heart Rate Gender Prediction Test?
You might have heard of the baby heartbeat test—it involves analyzing the speed of the fetal heartbeat in order to determine whether the baby is a boy or a girl. Does the heartbeat test really work? And when/how is a baby’s gender determined? When do babies first develop a heartbeat to begin with? Understanding the connections between heart rate and gender will go a long way in helping you understand whether the baby heart rate gender test is really an accurate method for determining your baby’s sex.
Baby Boy’s Heart Rate vs. Baby Girl’s BPM
The heartbeat test involves finding out the rate of your baby’s heart rate in beats per minute, or BPM. This is a figure that you can find out from your doctor as early as six weeks into your pregnancy, when a baby’s heart first begins beating. According to heart rate test, the fetal heart rate of girls is faster than that of boys.
A heart rate above 140bpm means the baby is a girl. A heart rate under 140 and closer to 120bpm means the baby will be born a male. But is there any science to this theory? And how is a baby’s gender assigned?
As it turns out, the sex of your baby is determined at the exact moment of conception. From the moment the egg is met by the sperm and creates an embryo, your baby’s sex has been genetically determined. The sex of the baby isn’t identifiable until some weeks later.
But what about baby’s heartbeat? When can you identify the speed and beats per minute of your baby’s own little ticker?
Usually, your baby’s heart will officially begin beating around the sixth week of your pregnancy. The good news? Your doctor should be able to identify that heartbeat as soon as it appears. It will show up as a tiny, rhythmic flicker on the ultrasound screen. Your doctor may be able to hear it with a fetal doppler around 10 weeks gestation during your exam.
In terms of the speed of your baby’s tiny heartbeat, it will start out relatively slow—around 90 bpm (beats per minute). Each day, the speed will increase. By around week 9, your baby’s heart rate is at its absolute fastest. This is somewhere between 140 and 170 bpm. If you are listening with the fetal doppler, you can distinguish your baby’s heartbeat from your own by the cadence of the beat. Your baby’s heartbeat will sound like a galloping horse.
How does that compare to adults? We’re much slower when it comes to how our hearts pump a rhythm. In fact, adult hearts pump at an average of 60-100 bpm. That means your little baby’s heart might be pumping more than twice as fast as yours at any given moment! It’s all part of making sure their body gets everything it needs to grow and develop before he or she emerges into the world to take on life!
So, the big question is this—what’s the connection between heart rate and baby’s gender? Can you really predict baby’s gender from its heart rate?
Unfortunately, science tells us that the answer is no. Scientists say that there is no correlation between the speed of a baby’s heartbeat and its gender. In fact, a fetal heartbeat can vary widely while in the womb depending on a wide range of factors. Like people, each individual baby has its own resting heart rate that can change based on mother’s diet and other factors. But the baby’s gender is not one of these factors.
According to scientific research conducted across decades and in many unique scientific arenas, there have been many attempts to identify a link between a fetal heart rate and gender. Unfortunately, the studies have consistently found no link at all.
Heart Rate Gender Study
In 2006, scientists set out to find a link between the difference of heart rate of different babies and their gender. The scientists studied nearly 500 sonograms, comparing them across multiple trimesters. What they ultimately concluded was that there was zero correlation and that heart rate was not an indicator of the baby’s sex.
Another more recent study, conducted in 2016, studied 300 male and 300 female heart rates, finding no significant difference between the heart rates based on gender.
Alternative fun ways to predict the sex of your baby
If you’re disappointed to discover the ineffectiveness of the baby heartbeat gender test, remember that many of these gender tests are just for fun. If you are curious about other methods or tests, here are some more popular gender predictors:
You might have heard of the Mayan calendar chart, which analyzes the odd or even numbers involved with the mother’s birth date and the month the baby was conceived. Or perhaps you’ve heard of the Chinese lunar calendar gender chart. It analyzes the mother’s age and the baby’s date of conception.
You might have even explored the early ultrasound theories. Dr. Ramzi’s Theory can be used from 6-8 weeks gestation. The Nub and Skull theories that can be used from 12-14 weeks gestation.
If you are planning a baby shower or gender reveal party, read up on our Old Wives Tales List.
Finally, there’s the much simpler baking soda test—which involves the mother adding her own urine to a container of baking soda and seeing whether it causes a bubbly, fizzy reaction or not.
Hopefully these gender prediction methods will make the wait more enjoyable until you can finally feel your baby’s heart next to yours.
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