Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: About Pregnancy

Question:
For those who have had more than one, do you think your symptoms differed between the sexes?

Answer:
I've had two girls and two boys, and I'd have to say no. Each pregnancy had its differences and similarities despite the gender. My first was a girl, and I didn't want much for sugar. I also didn't have morning sickness and didn't throw up. With dd2 and ds1, I had horrible ms and threw up regularly. With the boy I threw up all the way till the end. With my 4rth pregnancy and second boy, I was the least nauseated and sick. I didn't have morning sickness much at all, and I just felt really good. No rhyme or reason and gender didn't seem to have much to do with it. I believe there is some evidence that extreme cases of hyperemesis (vomiting) are more common when the fetus is female than male, but other than that, I'm not sure that different pregnancy symptoms tell you anything about the gender of the baby until you've had a sufficient number of pregnancies (like 5 or 6 resulting in more than one child of each gender) to correlate certain symptoms to certain genders. IOW, you might be feeling different in this pregnancy just because it's a different pregnancy, and not because the baby's of a different gender. Even if the baby turns out to be a boy, it won't necessarily tell you that your different symptoms were related to the baby's gender; it could just be coincidence For me, my two boy pregnancies were more like each other, symptom-wise, than either was like my girl pregnancy, but at 8 weeks, my symptoms in every pregnancy were pretty similar (feeling burpy and vaguely off my feed). I felt sicker and more physically drained in the first trimesters when I was pregnant with my daughter (middle child) than with either of my sons, but that could just as easily have been because I had a 16mo toddler and a full-time WOH job during the early stages of that pregnancy, whereas my second child was nearly 2 when my third was conceived and I was working at home part-time. I was pretty sure in the early stages of my third pregnancy that the baby was a boy because I felt so much more like I did in my first (boy) pregnancy than in my second, and I turned out to be right, but that could just as easily be luck of the draw as any REAL correlation between my symptoms and the baby's gender. I asked the same thing when pregnant with #2. #1 was a boy and I had kind of hoped for a girl the second time around. In my case both pregnancy's were very similar and I had another boy. From those I talked to, it seems that similar pregnancy's result in same sex children, and different pregnancy's result in boy-girl but this is in no way a true indicator. I pretty much knew in my gut that I was having another boy and was not surprised in the least when they announced that I had a son. I did not have a daughter and still sometimes wish that I had a girl but would not to trade in my two sons for the world and I don't plan to have any more.