My child was born in South Korea, where it is illegal for obstetricians to tell a pregnant woman the gender of her unborn child. But Korean women have their own ways to tell. Are you carrying the baby totally in front of you, or have you added a few pounds to the hips? Has your face broken out in zits? Did you subconsciously buy more pink or blue maternity clothes? Most importantly, what does the Chinese lunar calendar say?
I don’t believe in superstitions, but I was curious. I Googled “Chinese gender prediction,” and found a dozen sites more than willing to tell me the gender of my baby, ultrasound unseen. I typed my own birth date and my date of conception, and voila! I was having a boy. A few months later, I indeed gave birth to a boy. I laughed, but I was not convinced in the inviolability of the Chinese lunar calendar. After all, it had a 50/50 chance of being right.
Now I am pregnant again, this time in the United States, where doctors shamelessly aim the ultrasound monitor between the fetus’s legs and enthusiastically shout, “There it is! You’re having a….”
So I already knew what I was having when once again, I typed in my birth date and conception date into the Chinese lunar calendar. Guess what? It is right again.
I am starting to see why the Koreans consult this thing.
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