Gender experiment

Time for some updates! I mentioned in my last post that we performed a gender experiment this past weekend. There are loads of "tests" you can perform while pregnant to predict the sex of the baby.

There are the old wives tales that say you hold a ring on a string and if it spins or swings a certain way then it can mean girl or boy.

Then there's the baking soda test. Pee in a cup, add a tablespoon of baking soda and see if it fizzes. If there's fizz, it's a boy, no fizz means girl.

There are also commercial gender prediction kits you can buy at the drug stores. They are usually pretty pricey and from what I can tell aren't that reliable.

Here's the thing though. All of these are just for FUN and honestly any one of them has a 50% chance of being right...or wrong. So, we won't be painting the nursery based on our results.

Out of all the prediction tests I found online the test we did seemed to be the most scientific (aside from the baking soda test). I decided to do the red cabbage test. There's something in the coloring of red cabbage that is reactive to pH levels, which is the scale of acidity or alkalinity of a substance. I learned years ago in chemistry class that you can make your own litmus pH testing papers from red cabbage and coffee filters. (You can experiment with the leftover cabbage water after the test. Add lemon juice, baking soda, ammonia cleaner, dish soap, etc. and see what colors it changes into!) Interesting, very very interesting!

So here's what we did:

Cabbage Test

Materials:
-Red cabbage (size doesn't matter ;) )
-(2) Clear cups (regular glasses work fine but if you're squeamish disposable cups might be best)
-First morning urine
-Knife
-Pot or large saucepan
-Water

Process:
 
Cut cabbage in half

Cut one of the halves up into small cubes

Place cut cabbage into a large pot or saucepan and cover with cold water

Bring water to a boil, then remove from heat

Let sit for 10 minutes

After the 10 minutes you should have a dark purple colored water with your cabbage. Strain out the cabbage and leave water remaining.

Fill one cup 1/3 full of cabbage water. Fill the other cup with an equal amount of urine.

When your ready pour the urine into the cup of cabbage water and watch the magic happen!

If the water stays a purple color then this means you are having a GIRL. If the water turns to a magenta/red/pink-ish color then you are having a BOY.

The results are related to the pH of your urine. Boys are said to cause a more acidic urine, while girls urine is more basic. Who knows if this is really true or not, but in most of the cases I found online the predictions were correct. This was not the case with the other tests I looked up.

Here is our result:

Tell us what you think it means!