Reproductive medicine is improving and advancing every year. Knowing the gender of your baby used to be something of a surprise after a family conceived. However, gender selection is now a process that allows an individual or couple to choose the sex of their baby prior to conception.
Is Gender Selection possible?
Gender selection, also known as sex selection, is a fertility procedure used to choose the gender of your baby before conception occurs. Individuals and couples elect to choose their child’s gender or do so for medical reasons.
Sometimes, parents have a preference in the child’s gender. For instance, if they have a child of one sex and want a child of the opposite sex, it’s called “family balancing.” Many other parents use gender selection for medical reasons. Many diseases are sex-linked, like muscular dystrophy, which is inherited by the mother but will only affect a male offspring. Certain conditions impact one sex over the other, so many parents choose sex selection to avoid their child obtaining the disease.
Gender Selection Methods
There are many methods of gender selection, but here at The Fertility Center of Las Vegas, we use preimplantation genetic diagnosis and preimplantation genetic screening, along with the in vitro fertilization process. During PGD and PGS, your fertility specialist will remove a few cells from the embryo to test for genetic or chromosomal disorders. The cell removal does not harm the embryo in any way as the cells are removed from the outer shell called the “trophectoderm” which will eventually become the baby’s placenta.
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis is used to assess possibly serious inheritable disorders, some of which are linked to the sex of the baby. Parents can use this procedure when they wish to reduce the risk of having a child with the same condition.
Preimplantation genetic screening is most commonly used to identify that an embryo has the correct number of chromosomes prior to implantation. PGS tests for chromosomal disorders like down syndrome, but it can also reveal the sex of the embryo. So, many parents who electively use gender selection can use the PGS procedure for other reasons such as family balancing.
Ask a Fertility Specialist
Here at The Fertility Center of Las Vegas, we want to put as much control as possible in your hands. During your consultation, ask our fertility specialists about our gender selection procedure and see how our fertility treatments can help you start your family today.
