It's natural for a father who already has three girls to want a boy next time. But should he be able to make that choice? Reproductive technologies exist to make sex selection a reality. However, many people believe that sex selection is ethically wrong. The UN reports, for example, that every day in India, 2,000 women abort a baby girl. Called feticide, this is a form of sex selection. When sex selection occurs for medical reasons, many people support the phenomenon.

Sometimes the ultrasound just can't quite pick up the sex of your baby on your first visit. Or maybe you're waiting to be surprised at the time of delivery. Either way, there are more old wives' tales about guessing the gender of your baby then there are babies, it seems. While most of these methods have no scientific merit, they're still fun to toss around with your family and friends to keep the excitement and suspense of your baby's arrival in full swing.

Many soon-to-be parents want to know whether they're carrying a boy or a girl. Some will wait until the baby is born, while others will look to the ultrasound for the answer. Even before you can determine your baby's gender, however, you may be tempted to look to a pregnancy gender calculator to predict if you're having a boy or girl.

The only sure way to have a baby boy, according to In-Gender.com, is to use the high-tech method of preimplantation genetic diagnosis. This method involves fertilizing the egg with sperm in a laboratory, then testing the resulting embryos to determine their gender. Any male embryos are then implanted in the woman's uterus. This method is expensive, and some say it is unethical. There are other, less-extreme methods on conceiving a baby boy, but none of them are fail-proof.

Many women dream of having a baby girl, but there is only one sure way to conceive a baby girl, according to the Stanford School of Medicine. That way, called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), involves fertilizing an egg, then testing the embryo to find out if it's a boy or girl before implanting it in the uterus. This expensive procedure is controversial but allowable for family balancing in some countries, including the United States. There are other, less invasive, ways of increasing your chances of conceiving a girl.

Many women dream of having a diva daughter or spunky son and want to start planning for the future the minute the pregnancy test comes back positive. While the only accurate method for determining the baby's gender is amniocentesis, there are a few ages-old methods that have been used throughout the years.

In a 2007 Gallup Panel poll, when asked if they'd want to know the sex of their baby, 47 percent of Americans said they'd want to know if they were having a boy or a girl prior to their baby being born. If you're in that 47 percent, you'll be pleased to know that there are clinical tests that can be done to determine the sex of your baby prior to your baby's arrival.

Long before the advent of ultrasound technology, moms eager to determine what sex their new baby would be devised systems of signs that purportedly indicated the gender of the unborn tot. Today, moms-to-be can turn to science for a more foolproof means of gender prediction; however, many moms still delight in trying some of these old-school gender-prediction methods. If you are curious as to what you are going to have, try some of these home-spun prediction methods and see which gender comes out on top.

Professionals and stay-at-home moms alike have tried many methods for generations to determine the sex of their unborn children. Using wedding rings as pendulums, checking out Chinese lunar calendars, experiments with drain cleaner and other liquids, fortune tellers and a few more have been old wives' tales for centuries. But while sometimes expectant moms and dads make a lucky guess, the truth is that only a qualified doctor can accurately determine the sex of an unborn child.