Can You Choose Baby's Sex?

Does This Really Work?

Ellen Durston, a newspaper reporter in Chicago, always wanted her first child to be female. "Firstborn girls are more ambitious and confident than girls with an older sibling," contends Durston, 30, a secondborn. So when Durston and her husband decided to conceive, she began researching methods that would improve their odds of having a girl.

Durston came across a technique pioneered 30 years ago by obstetrics researcher Landrum Shettles, M.D., Ph.D. After following his advice, she became pregnant with Zoe, now 2. Would Zoe have been Zachary if the couple had left it to chance? Quite possibly, by Durston's reckoning: "I'm convinced that the Shettles method is why I had a girl."