Are pregnancies with girls and boys different?
If there was an oestrogen surge in mothers who are expecting a female baby, could this explain some of the old wives’ tales of extra moodiness or teariness in girl pregnancies?
There are
significant individual differences in how vulnerable women are to fluctuations in hormones. In some cases, higher oestrogen levels
have been reported as “psycho-protective”. This means they moderate mood, while
other authors report oestrogen fluctuations triggering mood disorders and even depression in women.
What about aversions or nausea that women report to be different in male and female pregnancies?
A fascinating 2015 study looked at the emotion of disgust and how it differs according to the sex of the baby. The researchers posited that disgust is a protective mechanism that helps the mother avoid risks and harms during pregnancy - for example, aversions to certain foods or situations.
They found that disgust was high in the first trimester for pregnancies bearing boys and girls, but it decreased for girl pregnancies after the first trimester and remained high for boy pregnancies into the second trimester.
The reasoning for this is that male fetuses are considered more vulnerable to their environment, and the aversions reflect a natural predisposition to maintain protective behaviours longer for male pregnancies than female pregnancies.
So it appears there’s not enough evidence to back up claims male or female pregnancies differ significantly in terms of the maternal hormonal environment. This makes it unlikely that anecdotes of moodier, angrier or uglier pregnancies are due to the sex of the fetus.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thecon...different-when-carrying-a-boy-or-a-girl-78348